Archaeologists in Germany have uncovered some of the earliest evidence of the use of clothing, with newly discovered cut marks on a cave bear paw suggesting the prehistoric animals were skinned for their fur some 300,000 years ago.

The discovery in Schöningen, northern Germany, is exciting because – despite the depictions of cave men and women draped in furs in popular culture – very little is truly known about how early humans clothed their bodies and survived harsh winters.

Fur, leather and other organic materials typically don’t preserve beyond 100,000 years, meaning that direct evidence of prehistoric clothing is scant.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/05/europe/bear-skins-prehistoric-clothing-scn/index.html

Um, possum skins?

dv said:

Archaeologists in Germany have uncovered some of the earliest evidence of the use of clothing, with newly discovered cut marks on a cave bear paw suggesting the prehistoric animals were skinned for their fur some 300,000 years ago.

The discovery in Schöningen, northern Germany, is exciting because – despite the depictions of cave men and women draped in furs in popular culture – very little is truly known about how early humans clothed their bodies and survived harsh winters.

Fur, leather and other organic materials typically don’t preserve beyond 100,000 years, meaning that direct evidence of prehistoric clothing is scant.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/05/europe/bear-skins-prehistoric-clothing-scn/index.html

or they might have just been skun to get at the meat. Bears thinking about.

I’ll read the article now.

Bogsnorkler said:

Bears thinking about.

zing

dv said:

Bogsnorkler said:

Bears thinking about.

zing

“We found the cutmarks on elements of the hands/feet where very little meat or fat is present on the bones, which argues against the cutmarks originating from the butchering of the animal,” Verheijen explained via email.

Oh well. another great theory bites the dust.

Bogsnorkler said:

“We found the cutmarks on elements of the hands/feet where very little meat or fat is present on the bones, which argues against the cutmarks originating from the butchering of the animal,” Verheijen explained via email.

Oh well. another great theory bites the dust.

Aren’t you just happy you thought of a similar theory as really smart people?

Arts said:

Bogsnorkler said:

“We found the cutmarks on elements of the hands/feet where very little meat or fat is present on the bones, which argues against the cutmarks originating from the butchering of the animal,” Verheijen explained via email.

Oh well. another great theory bites the dust.

Aren’t you just happy you thought of a similar theory as really smart people?

well, I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, but…

I think this should be divided up into for warmth and for modesty.
To be brutally Frank I just don’t think a fig leaf was big enough

Peak Warming Man said:

I think this should be divided up into for warmth and for modesty.
To be brutally Frank I just don’t think a fig leaf was big enough

Wouldn’t do a lot dor keeping the rain off.

Peak Warming Man said:

I think this should be divided up into for warmth and for modesty.
To be brutally Frank I just don’t think a fig leaf was big enough

PMSL.

300,000 years is way early. However, as Bogsnorkler nicely pointed out, this is only evidence of butchery, not clothing,

Even if it’s for bear/bare hide (thanks dv), as roughbark pointed out that could be for rugs rather than clothing.

The human species moving north out of warm Africa into cold Europe would suggest some sort of clothing,

On the other hand, Australian aborigines didn’t wear any (most of the time), not even in cold Tasmania, and that was very much more recently.

I am reminded of something. Lice. The origin age for the divergence of pubic lice and head lice has been used as a marker date for the origin of permanent clothing (for something other than cold).

From wikipedia:
> Scientists have never agreed on when humans began wearing clothes and estimates suggested by various experts have ranged greatly, from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago.

> Recent studies by Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser and Mark Stoneking—anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology—have attempted to constrain the most recent date of the introduction of clothing with an indirect method relying on lice. …These studies have produced dates from 40,000 to 170,000 years ago, with a greatest likelihood lying at about 107,000 years ago.