A team of scientists said last Thursday that artifacts discovered in a cave in Morocco, dating back to 120 000 years ago, indicate that humans made specialized bone tools to skin animals and then treat their skins to produce fur and leather.
This discovery in the Smugglers' Cave, located about 250 meters from the Atlantic coast in the city of Temara, seems to be the oldest evidence known to us of clothing in the archaeological record.
The invention of clothing is logically a major reason for the expansion of the human species, which appeared more than 300 000 years ago in Africa then across the world. This invention will then be a major component of human identity today.
The scientists found 62 tools made from animal bones and then identified a pattern of cut marks on the bones of three small carnivore species: a fox, a jackal, and a wild cat, indicating that they had been skinned for fur, not meat. The frames of antelopes and wild cattle suggest that the skins of these animals could have been used to make leather, while meat was consumed.
“Clothing is a unique human innovation,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist and co-author of the study, also from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
The cave artifacts are dated to an era during which evidence of personal adornment and other signs of human symbolic expression appear at various archaeological sites.
As organic clothing perishes over time, none has therefore been found in the cave, so their shape or complexity will also remain a mystery to us. That said, the tools could have been dated to around 120 000 to 90 000 years ago.
Before this discovery, the oldest evidence of clothing was bone needles from around 45 000 to 40 000 years old in Siberia.
Neanderthals, close cousins of Homo Sapiens, are believed to have invented clothing earlier given their presence in Eurasia, a cold continent that predates ours.