(c.30,000 BCE- PALEOLITHIC ERA, RUSSIA)
Clothing made using a sewing needle succeeded knotted and tied animal skins to protect man from the elements. This enabled humankind to move out of Africa into colder climates. The earliest clothing consisted of fur, leather and leaves of grass that were draped, wrapped or tied around the body. Anthropologists have conducted a genetic analysis of human body lice, which suggests that clothing originated quite recently, around 107,000 years ago. Lice are an indicator of clothes-wearing, since humans have sparse body hair, and lice generally require the presence of human clothing in which to survive.
Research suggests that the invention of clothing may have coincided with the northward migration of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa around 100,000 years ago. Another group of scientists estimates that clothing originated around 540,000 years ago. Some human cultures such as the Inuit until recently made their clothing entirely of prepared and decorated furs and skins. Other cultures supplemented or replaced leather and skins with cloth: either woven, knitted or twined from various animal and vegetable fibres. Clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to solid artefacts, but in 1988 in Russia archaeologists found bone and ivory sewing needles dating from 30,000 BCE.
Knitting and crochet are thought to have begun when primitive people sought to make webs out of roots and tendrils, a skill which evolved into hand-knitting wool. Making fabrics such as linen (from flax) by hand was always a laborious process, and the textile industry was the first to be mechanized in the Industrial Revolution, with the invention of the powered loom (see Arkwright 1771, and Cartwright 1785). Different cultures evolved various ways of creating clothes. As cloth of any description was handmade and thus expensive, it was essential to keep it uncut if possible for other uses or users.
The Greeks and Romans draped togas over their bodies, and many people still wear garments consisting of rectangles of cloth wrapped around them, e.g. in the Indian subcontinent we see men wearing the dhoti and women the sari. These garments are simply tied up, but the Scottish kilt is held in place by a belt and pins. The expensive cloth remains uncut, and different people of various sizes can wear such a garment. Another approach involves cutting and sewing the cloth, but using every bit of the cloth rectangle in making the clothing. The tailor may cut triangular pieces from one corner of the cloth, and then add them elsewhere as gussets, e.g. in men’s shirts.
There are said to be four primary factors in clothing comfort, identifiable as the ‘4 Fs of Comfort’: (1) fashion; (2) feel; (3) fit; and (4) function. Mark Twain acknowledged the importance of clothing in More Maxims of Mark (1927): ‘Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.’
By Terry Breverton in "Breverton's Encyclopedia of Inventions", Quercus, London, UK, 2012. Digitalized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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