Clothing is thought to be a significant factor in shaping what makes us human. Our ancestors had access to more sources and environments, connect with a wider area, and the development of clothes made it possible for them to live in more places around the world. Now, clothing is associated with personality and position. According to historical data, clothing was not a necessary component of society or cultures, aside from thermal ones.
The initial research project to demonstrate that eyed needles were a novel technological advancement used to enclose clothes for social and cultural purposes, is led by Dr. Ian Gilligan, an Honorary Associate in the field of antiquities at the University of Sydney. This marked the big change from clothing as a form of protection to clothing as an expression of identity.
Because they file a change in clothing’s use from utilitarian to cultural purposes, eye needle tools, according to Dr. Ian Gilligan, are an important development in prehistoric history.
In their report, Paleolithic eyed knives and the development of dress, Dr. Gilligan and his co-authors reexamine the evidence of recent revelations in the development of clothes.
“Why do we use clothes? We assume it’s a part of being human, but when you look at various nations, you realize that people lived and lived perfectly well in society without clothes,” says Dr. Gilligan. What piques my interest is the change from being a real necessity in some settings to a cultural necessity in all others.
Around 40, 000 years ago, the first eyed knives ever seen in Siberia first appeared. Watched needles, one of the most recognizable Neolithic artefacts from the Stone Age, were more challenging to make than bone awls, which were sufficient for fitting clothing. Tooth trends are instruments made of animal bones that are shaved to a stage. Spotted needles have a ruptured hole (eye) that makes them easier to sew sinew or thread and are modified bone trends.
The development of eyed needles may reveal the creation of more complex, layered clothes as well as the adornment of outfits by attaching stones and other small decorative products to garments, as evidence suggests tooth trends were already being used to make tailored clothes.
Up until the most recent glacier pattern, clothing was only worn on an ad hoc basis, according to experts. We find the typical tools, such as hide scrapers and stone scrapers, appearing and disappearing throughout the various epochs of the last ice ages, according to Dr. Gilligan.
Because people in the colder regions of Eurasia were forced to wear clothes all the time, according to Dr. Gilligan and his co-authors, clothing became a form of decoration in the late 1980s. This was because conventional body decoration techniques, like body painting with ochre or deliberate scarification, were not practical during the last ice age.
According to Dr. Gilligan, “the appearance of eyed needles is especially significant because it indicates the use of clothes as decoration.” Eye needles would have been particularly important for the extremely good sewing that was necessary to beautify clothing.
So, clothes evolved to fulfill both a social, aesthetic, and visual function for an individual and a cultural identity as well as a functional need for protection and comfort against outside elements.
Larger and more complex societies were created as a result of people moving to warmer climates and working together with their tribe or community based on shared clothing patterns and symbols. The knowledge gained from the production of clothing made for a more sustainable lifestyle and improved the long-term survival and prosperity of human communities.
Despite the weather, covering the human body has remained a social practice. Beyond the introduction of clothing as dress, Dr. Gilligan’s future work examines the psychological effects and functions of wearing clothing.
“We take it for granted that we feel comfortable when we’re not in public and uncomfortable when we’re not wearing clothes.” But how does wearing clothing affect the way we perceive ourselves, how we perceive ourselves as people, and perhaps how we perceive the world around us?
This paper was published in Science Advances.
DECLARATION
The authors declare no competing interests. The following organizations provided funding for this study: the National Social Science Foundation of China, the National Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, the University of Bordeaux, the French government, the University of Bordeaux, the Research Council of Norway, Centres of Excellence ( SFF), the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour, the European Research Council Synergy Grant for the project Evolution of Cognitive Tools for Quantification ( QUANTA ), the State Assignment of the Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, and the Russian Academy