The study of the history of clothing and textiles traces the development, use, and availability of clothing and textiles over human history. Clothing and textiles reflect the materials and technologies available in different civilizations at different times. The variety and distribution of clothing and textiles within a society reveal social customs and culture.
The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of most human societies. Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat, and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates. As early clothing was biodegradable, evidence of when humans started wearing clothes, and what these clothes were made of, has been difficult for scientists to determine. The earliest dates come from studies on the evolution of clothing lice, which suggest humans were wearing clothes sometime between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. Evidence of silk weaving has been found in China dating to 8,500 years ago. The earliest evidence of cotton being used comes from cotton fibers which had mineralized inside copper beads found in the Indus Valley at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh, dating to c. 6000 BC. Cotton spinning began in India c. 3000 BC.
Textiles can be felt or spun fibers made into yarn and subsequently netted, looped, knit or woven to make fabrics which appeared in the Middle East during the late Stone Age.Creativity In The Textile Industries: A Story From Pre-History To The 21st century . Textileinstitutebooks.com. Retrieved on 1 January 2012. From ancient times to the present day, methods of textile production have continually evolved, and the choices of textiles available have influenced how people carry their possessions, clothed themselves, and decorated their surroundings.
Sources available for the study of clothing and textiles include material remains discovered via archaeology; representation of textiles and their manufacture in art; and documents concerning the manufacture, acquisition, use, and trade of fabrics, tools, and finished garments. Scholarship of textile history, especially its earlier stages, is part of material culture studies.
Prehistoric development
The development of textile and clothing in prehistory has been the subject of a number of scholarly studies since the late 20th century. These sources have helped to provide a coherent history of these prehistoric developments. Nonetheless, scientists have never agreed on when humans began wearing clothes and the estimates suggested by various experts have ranged greatly, from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago.
Recent studies by Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser and Mark Stoneking—anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology—have attempted to constrain the most recent date of the introduction of clothing with an indirect method relying on lice. The rationale for this method of dating stems from the fact that the human body louse (P. humanus corporus) cannot live outside of clothing, dying after only a few hours without shelter. This strongly implies that the date of the body louse's speciation from its parent, the human louse (Pediculus humanus), can have taken place no earlier than the earliest human adoption of clothing. This date, at which the body louse diverged from both its parent species and its sibling subspecies, the head louse (P. humanus capitus), can be determined by the number of mutations each has developed during the intervening time. Such mutations occur at a known rate and the date of last-common-ancestor for two species can therefore be estimated from the difference in number of their respective mutations. These studies have produced dates ranging from 40,000 to 170,000 years ago, with a 2003 study speculating a date of 107,000 years ago, and a 2011 study confirming the most likely time of 170,000 years ago.
Kittler, Kayser and Stoneking suggest that the invention of clothing may have coincided with the northward migration of modern Homo sapiens away from the warm climate of Africa, which is thought to have begun between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. A second group of researchers, also relying on the genetic clock, estimate that clothing originated between 30,000 and 114,000 years ago. Some of these estimates predate the first known human exodus from Africa. However, other Hominidae species, now extinct, may have also worn clothes and appear to have migrated earlier. It follows that the lice which presently infest human clothing may have first been acquired by Homo sapiens in colder climates from the bodies or discarded clothing of these cousin hominins.
Dating with direct archeological evidence produces dates consistent with those hinted at by lice. In September 2021, scientists reported evidence of clothes being made from 90,000 to 120,000 years ago based on findings in deposits in Morocco. However, despite these archaeological indications and genetic evidence, there is no single estimate that is widely accepted.
Cave paintings and pictorial evidence suggest the existence of dress in the Paleolithic period, around 30,000 years ago, though these were skin drapes. Textile clothing came to notice around 27,000 years ago, while actual textile fragments from 7000 B.C. have been discovered by archeologists.
Early adoption of apparel Sewing needles have been dated to at least 50,000 years ago (Denisova Cave, Siberia)—and are likely to have been made by H. Longi, about 10,000 years before the arrival of Neanderthal and human groups in the cave. The oldest possible example is 60,000 years ago, a needlepoint (missing stem and eye) found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Other early examples of needles dating from 41,000 to 15,000 years ago are found in multiple locations, e.g. Slovenia, Russia, China, Spain, and France.
The earliest dyed flax fibers have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia and date back to 36,000.
The 25,000-year-old Venus Figurine "Venus of Lespugue", found in southern France in the Pyrenees, depicts a cloth or twisted fiber skirt. Some other Western Europe figurines were adorned with basket hats or caps, belts were worn at the waist, and a strap of cloth wrapped around the body right above the breast. Eastern European figurines wore belts, hung low on the hips and sometimes string skirts. However, according to archeologists James M. Adovasio, Soffer and Hyland, the garments are more likely ritual wear, real or imagined, which served as a signifier of distinct social categories.
Archaeologists have discovered artifacts from later which appear to have been used in the textile arts: net gauges from 5000 B.C., spindle needles, and weaving sticks.
Ancient textiles and clothing
Knowledge of ancient textiles and clothing has expanded in the recent past due to modern technological developments.Forensic Photography Brings Color Back To Ancient Textiles . Researchnews.osu.edu. Retrieved on 1 January 2012. One of the earliest fabrics - after the initial use of animal-skin textiles - may have been felt. The earliest known plant-based textile from South America was discovered in Guitarrero Cave in Peru. It was woven out of vegetable fiber and dates back to 8,000 B.C.E. Surviving examples of nålebinding, another textile method emerging after animal-skin textile usage, have been found in Israel; they date from 6500 B.C.
Looms
A loom is a device or machine used for weaving cloth. From prehistory through the early Middle Ages, for most of Europe, the Near East and North Africa, two main types of loom dominated textile production: the warp-weighted loom and the two-beam loom. The length of the beam determined the width of the cloth woven upon the loom; it could extend to 2 to 3 meters. Early woven clothing was often made of full loom widths draped, tied, or pinned in place. Large-scale fabrics for clothes were most likely produced on the warp-weighted loom in Central European prehistory: this is evidenced by the numerous finds of loom weights from prehistoric settlements. Even small fragments of large textiles produced on the warp-weighted loom can be identified by their starting border.
Preservation Knowledge of ancient cultures varies greatly with the climatic conditions to which archeological deposits are exposed; the Middle East, South America and the arid fringes of China have provided many very early samples in good condition, along with textile impressions in clay, and graphic portrayals. In northern Eurasia, peat bogs, rock-salt mines, oak coffins, and permafrost also preserved textiles, with whole Neolithic garments surviving (some of the most famous are those associated with Ötzi ("the Iceman")), along with artifacts associated with textile production. Early development of textiles in the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa and other moist parts of the world remains unclear.
Textile trade in the ancient world
Throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, the fertile grounds of the Eurasian Steppe provided a setting for a network of nomadic communities to develop and interact. The Steppe Route has long connected regions of the Asian continent with trade and transmission of culture, including clothing.
Around 114 B.C., the Han dynasty,Elisseeff, Vadime, The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce, UNESCO Publishing / Berghahn Books, 2001, initiated the Silk Road trade-route. Geographically, the Silk Road or Silk Route is an interconnected series of ancient trade routes between Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) in China, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, extending over on land and sea. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern world. The exchange of luxury textiles was predominant on the Silk Road, which linked traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods.
Ancient Near East The earliest known woven textiles of the Near East may be flax fabrics used to wrap the dead; these have been excavated at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia. Found in a Neolithic grave, and "protected by several layers of clay/plaster, in an anaerobic milieu [...] They were 'baked', or 'steam cooked' ()" in a fire. Because of the absence of flax seeds at or near the site, the textile may have been imported from the Levant. Evidence exists of flax cultivation from in the Near East, but the breeding of sheep with a wooly fleece rather than hair occurs much later, . Well-preserved linen textiles found in the Cave of the Warrior in Judea date from around 3200 BC.
In Mesopotamia, the clothing of a regular Sumerian was very simple, especially in summer. Winter clothes were made of sheep fur. Even wealthy men were depicted with naked torsos, wearing only short skirts, known as kaunakes, while women wore long dresses to their ankles. The king wore a tunic and a coat that reached to his knees, with a belt in the middle. Over time, the development of the craft of wool weaving in Mesopotamia led to a great variety in clothing. Thus, towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC and later men wore tunics with short sleeves and even over the knees, with a belt (over which the rich wore a wool cloak). Women's dresses featured more varied designs: with or without sleeves, narrow or wide, usually long and without highlighting the body
Ancient India