A new discovery has recently been reported on what’s possibly the earliest evidence of clothing humans manufactured in a cave near the Atlantic coast of Morocco 120,000 years ago. It is unclear how the pieces got there but the one thing we are sure about is that, the ancient indigenous Amazigh people were the first ones yet in history to come up with tools used to make leather clothing.
The researchers found 62 different bone tools in Middle Stone Age layers dated to 90,000-120 thousand years ago. Despite their age the implements represent relatively specialized instruments for tasks at hand which suggests that humans first started using more crude versions of such implements even earlier than this period.
Scientists behind this discovery have just published a new paper in iScience on their findings which discuss how clothes may be key evidence as we try and understand our evolution past its original state. “We assume that clothing was integral to early hominins’ ability adaptability by facilitating insulation from cold environments,” says Emily Hallett, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.
The team discovered that the most prominent tools found at this site were in the form of scrapers and knives, which would have been used to remove skin or fur from animals. Bones revealed human remains as well; however it is still unclear if they were there for ritualistic purposes because no burial pits have yet been excavated onsite.
Clothing is a uniquely human invention, and until recently no one knew for sure how old clothes are. A new study investigated the durability of animal skins used to make garments in historic times by analyzing their chemical composition against those found on modern day foxes who shed fur similar enough that it could have been harvested for use as fabric or insulation during historical periods when natural resources ran low.” said archaeologist Elinor Cherry.
The oldest evidence found prior this discovery of the making of Homo sapiens, or what is known as a genus “Homo sapien,” was from Siberia and dated between 40,000 – 45 thousand years ago. Researchers believe that our species may have begun clothing thousands upon centuries prior to its first tool creation discovered at an archaeological site.
