Man started wearing clothes 170,000 years ago

[Still Waters]

Man started wearing clothes 170,000 years ago enabling him to successfully migrate out of Africa, according to a new study following the evolution of lice.

Dr David Reed, a mammalogist at the University of Florida, studies lice in modern humans to better understand human evolution and migration patterns.

His research shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 70,000 years before migrating into colder climates and higher latitudes, which began about 100,000 years ago.

Pinpointing this date would have been virtually impossible to determine using archaeological data because early clothing would not survive in archaeological sites.

Instead, Dr Reed's five-year study used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice.

He said: 'We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing

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[danielost]

wearing cloths also protect you from a desert sun.

[Boe]

Early decendents from africa were well suited for the desert sun though. Darker skin protects the body from the sun, as well as the tall/long body type enables faster cooling and less exposure.

It makes sense to me that clothing would become a necessity as they moved to colder climates.

[Fluffybunny]

A lesser known fact:

169,990 years ago, the first gay guy made wearing a tiger skin look good.

[ShadowSot]

A lesser known fact:

169,990 years ago, the first gay guy made wearing a tiger skin look good.

I thought it was leopard skin?

[Fluffybunny]

I thought it was leopard skin?

Leopard skin was so out...

It was kind of like wearing white after labor day...but with pelts...

[hetrodoxly]

The wearing of animal skins probably started with hunters trying to get closer to their prey and or ritualistic reasons as well, also it can get very cold in Africa of a night, i don't think they've thought this through.

[danielost]

Early decendents from africa were well suited for the desert sun though. Darker skin protects the body from the sun, as well as the tall/long body type enables faster cooling and less exposure.

It makes sense to me that clothing would become a necessity as they moved to colder climates.

i have a question for you,

if black skin protects you from sunlight and over heating then why do they tell us to avoid black clothing because it absorbs all the heat. the only thing dark skin does is keep you from burning as easily. you can still over heat. loose fitting larried clothing keeps you from over heating by absorbing your sweat and using the wind to cool you off.

[Boe]

i have a question for you,

if black skin protects you from sunlight and over heating then why do they tell us to avoid black clothing because it absorbs all the heat. the only thing dark skin does is keep you from burning as easily. you can still over heat. loose fitting larried clothing keeps you from over heating by absorbing your sweat and using the wind to cool you off.

The darker skin helps mostly because the higher lvls of melanin act more or less as a sun screen (melanin is what gives your skin its pigment). So it offers more protection against UV radiation. It might absorb more light, but it blocks th UV rays more effectively.

[danielost]

The darker skin helps mostly because the higher lvls of melanin act more or less as a sun screen (melanin is what gives your skin its pigment). So it offers more protection against UV radiation. It might absorb more light, but it blocks th UV rays more effectively.

as i said it might slow down sun burn. but we humans have to be careful with artifical uv blockers, it seems that vitamin d is in the uv.

[Copasetic]

as i said it might slow down sun burn. but we humans have to be careful with artifical uv blockers, it seems that vitamin d is in the uv.

Like Boe pointed out to you; its the melanin that is important in this case. Eumelanin (the "dark" melanin) absorbs ionizing radiation (like high frequency UV radiation) that could cause breakages, damage, alterations (like thymine-thymine bonds, etc) in your DNA-Potentially leading to things like melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma or other skin neoplasms.

Black clothing is black because of dye pigments in said clothing, which may or may not be useful for blocking ionizing radiation and the structure of the clothing (at the microscopic level) may also not be adequate to block said radiation.

When Boe was discussing cooling he was talking about body structure. "Tall and skinny" gives you more surface area where blood doesn't run "deep" in limbs, allowing a lesser area of the body to be near core temperature. When the outer surfaces of the body are below core temperature, convection and conduction allow "internal" blood to loose heat to "external" blood and help cool the body.

[d e v i c e]

Clothes might have started out just as a form of adornment or decoration. They partly still serve that purpose today.

[sqmsonite]

Nice if he could wear the same clothes for 170,000 years.

[EternalBlizzard]

yeah people need clothes imagine if clothing was never invented and when we go on the street's without clothe's booom yeah ahah

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

A lesser known fact:

169,990 years ago, the first gay guy made wearing a tiger skin look good.

LOL. I won't be watching The Flintstones reruns the same way anymore.

[JGirl]

yeah people need clothes imagine if clothing was never invented and when we go on the street's without clothe's booom yeah ahah

if clothing were never invented people's attitude about nudity would be entirely different so your presumption of booom yeah wouldn't be an issue.

i say we all go back to the toga. roomy, comfy and inexpensive.

[Big Bad Voodoo]

At that he said: “Who told you that you were naked? Book of Genesis.

Edited January 13, 2011 by the L

[+OverSword]

Ridiculous! Everyone knows that the world is only 6,000 years old!

[Cradle of Fish]

Ridiculous! Everyone knows that the world is only 6,000 years old!

But for that to be true, you must first prove that the world actually exists at all. Which it doesn't.

[offlowhigh]

Like they know what people were wearing 170,000 years ago ? Or what was really going on 2 or 3,oo years ago , just theory right !!