The History of First Clothing, It is not certain when people first started wearing clothes, however, anthropologists estimate that it was somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 years ago. The first clothes were made from natural elements: animal skin, fur, grass, leaves, bone, and shells. Garments were often draped or tied; however, simple needles made out of animal bone provide evidence of sewn leather and fur garments from at least 30,000 years ago.When settled neolithic cultures discovered the advantages of woven fibers over animal hides, the making of cloth, drawing on basketry techniques, emerged as one of humankind’s fundamental technologies. Hand and hand with the history of clothing goes the history of textiles. Humans had to invent weaving, spinning, tools, and the other techniques needed to be able to make the fabrics used for clothing.
Ready-Made Clothing
Before sewing machines, nearly all clothing was local and hand-sewn, there were tailors and seamstresses in most towns that could make individual items of clothing for customers. After the sewing machine was invented, the ready-made clothing industry took off.
The Many Functions of Clothes
Clothing serves many purposes: it can help protect us from various types of weather, and can improve safety during hazardous activities such as hiking and cooking. It protects the wearer from rough surfaces, rash-causing plants, insect bites, splinters, thorns and prickles by providing a barrier between the skin and the environment. Clothes can insulate against cold or heat. They can also provide a hygienic barrier, keeping infectious and toxic materials away from the body. Clothing also provides protection from harmful UV radiation.
The most obvious function of clothing is to improve the comfort of the wearer, by protecting the wearer from the elements. In hot climates, clothing provides protection from sunburn or wind damage, while in cold climates its thermal insulation properties are generally more important. Shelter usually reduces the functional need for clothing. For example, coats, hats, gloves, and other superficial layers are normally removed when entering a warm home, particularly if one is residing or sleeping there. Similarly, clothing has seasonal and regional aspects, so that thinner materials and fewer layers of clothing are generally worn in warmer seasons and regions than in colder ones.
Clothing performs a range of social and cultural functions, such as individual, occupational and sexual differentiation, and social status. In many societies, norms about clothing reflect standards of modesty, religion, gender, and social status. Clothing may also function as a form of adornment and an expression of personal taste or style.Some clothing protects from specific environmental hazards, such as insects, noxious chemicals, weather, weapons, and contact with abrasive substances. Conversely, clothing may protect the environment from the clothing wearer, as with doctors wearing medical scrubs.
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. There has always been some disagreement among scientists on when humans began wearing clothes, but studies involving the evolution of body lice suggest it started sometime around 170,000 years ago. 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.
Textiles’ History Textile history is almost as old as human civilization, and as time has passed, the history of textile has been more enriched. The invention of flax and wool fabric at the dig of Swiss lake people in the 6th and 7th centuries BC is the oldest reported indication of employing fiber. Silk weaving was introduced to India circa 400 AD, whereas cotton spinning dates back to 3000 BC.[1]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.[2] From ancient times to the present day, methods of textile production have continually evolved, and the choices of textiles available have influenced how people carried their possessions, clothed themselves, and decorated their surroundings.[3]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.
