I know that clothing must have been invented long before the first example of clothing that has survived to the present, but I'm curious as to whether anyone knows the date of the oldest textiles found so far.
One of oldest proof of textiles are imprints of textiles on ceramic vessels. It happened accidentally when fresh clay pots were touched with fabrics, clothes of pot makers, and their texture got imprinted and as such found by archeologists. I'm not sure where is the article I read it in.

Otherwise textiles must have showed up right after net (for catching animals) invention. It is roughly same idea of weaving pattern, just much denser than when making nets or baskets.

I wonder what was invented first, the weaving pattern or making threads/strings out of fine fiber.

Maybe inspecting ancint cave paintings or figurines would shine some light if they wore textiles of just skins.


This is interesting:
The earliest dyedflax fibers have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia and date back to 36,000 BP
But they don't give a source.
 
Are you not aware that the bible is an authentic document

Which bible? Which version? :rolleyes:

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was written in Greek, and Jesus himself probably spoke Aramaic in everyday life. Which version do you use, which, if any, books that are commonly called "Apocrypha" (both intertestamental and new testament) do you consider to hold authority, or do you agree with the decisions of First Council of Nicea to render them non-canonical?

Also, have you ever wondered yourself why we call the first and second books of Moses respectively "Genesis" and "Exodus", and not "Bereshīt" and "Shemot"? These names come from the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek from the Hellenistic period. There are differences between it and the Masoretic version (written in the original Hebrew), were you even aware of that?

One of the most beautiful examples is the story of the Deluge, which is not an originally Jewish story, it is Sumerian in origin was taken from the much older Epic of Gilgamesh (in some cases, taken to the to the word from the Akkadian standard version).

We can continue the discussion of the origin of the various parts of the bible in another thread, but that certainly doesn't belong here.
 
Which bible? Which version? :rolleyes:

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was written in Greek, and Jesus himself probably spoke Aramaic in everyday life. Which version do you use, which, if any, books that are commonly called "Apocrypha" (both intertestamental and new testament) do you consider to hold authority, or do you agree with the decisions of First Council of Nicea to render them non-canonical?

Also, have you ever wondered yourself why we call the first and second books of Moses respectively "Genesis" and "Exodus", and not "Bereshīt" and "Shemot"? These names come from the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek from the Hellenistic period. There are differences between it and the Masoretic version (written in the original Hebrew), were you even aware of that?

One of the most beautiful examples is the story of the Deluge, which is not an originally Jewish story, it is Sumerian in origin was taken from the much older Epic of Gilgamesh (in some cases, taken to the to the word from the Akkadian standard version).

We can continue the discussion of the origin of the various parts of the bible in another thread, but that certainly doesn't belong here.

Ah...what a pleasure to read something by someone who knows of what he speaks as to these matters!

@Aberdeen...totally agree.
 
The Lembombo Bone of Swaziland near South Africa is the oldest example of mathematical computation at approximately 37 years ago.

http://books.google.com/books?id=nnpChqstvg0C&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=lebombo+bone&source=bl&ots=lgLJbsCsWo&sig=rbuC9Xw3XqUuhNHMlpu4glQ2jY8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oSQaU63CNeKZ1AGQroHYDA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=lebombo%20bone&f=false


On a side note, use some common sense Eupedia posters.

Don't respond to individuals with avatar's named "Engel" with race shown to be "Aryan". He is obviously an agitator from another website as shows up here from time to time.

Stay on topic.
 
The Lembombo Bone of Swaziland near South Africa is the oldest example of mathematical computation at approximately 37 years ago.

http://books.google.com/books?id=nnpChqstvg0C&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=lebombo+bone&source=bl&ots=lgLJbsCsWo&sig=rbuC9Xw3XqUuhNHMlpu4glQ2jY8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oSQaU63CNeKZ1AGQroHYDA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=lebombo%20bone&f=false


On a side note, use some common sense Eupedia posters.

Don't respond to individuals with avatar's named "Engel" with race shown to be "Aryan". He is obviously an agitator from another website as shows up here from time to time.

Stay on topic.

Good advice. But I think you have a small error in your own post. Shouldn't that be 37,000 years ago and not 37 years ago?
 
The first evidence of wheeled cars or pushbarrows is wheel tracks found at the Flintbek megalith tombs near Kiel, Germany (ca.3.400 BC). The wheels were 5-6 cm wide, the wheelbase measured 1.1-1.2 m, which is similar to the measures of the first wheel found in Slovenia. The Flintbek tracks predate the Slovakian wheel by around 200 years.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+N...ntbek+LA+3,+north+Germany,+and...-a0268601224
http://webcl3top.rz.uni-kiel.de/ufg/images/stories/userpic/dmiscka/mischka_landscapearch_web.pdf

Flintbek_1.jpg
Flintbek_2.jpg
Edit: Looking at the papers in more detail, it appears that while the Flintbek tracks are the first material evidence of wheel use, depictions of wheel carts on a pot from Boronice (near Krakow, Poland), and on Late Uruk clay tables are at least contemporary, possibly a century older.
The earliest evidence for wheels and wagons is spread over large distances. However, we probably underestimate the occurrence of wheels and thus their functions within Neolithic societies because of the poor preservation of wooden artefacts (cf. Johannsen & Laursen 2010). More finds can be expected in the future and better dates (for example of the Majkop and Boleraz specimen) may come in earlier than 3400 or even 3500 BC.
 
Last edited:
First cloths dated to 170 thousands years ago by evolution of specialized louse which live only in cloths. Unlike its cousins who live in head and pubic hair.
Textiles were not invented yet, therefore we are talking only about leather cloths, furs, skins.

Clothing

While the evolutionary history of lice helps us trace our deep past, we can also use them to explain more recent developments, such as the advent of attire. Body lice hang out—literally—in clothing, and pinpointing when this Pediculus subspecies separated from its head-bound brethren may have helped pinpoint when Homo sapiens decided to put on some clothes. Fig leaves aside, the question has been wide open, with ranges from 40,000 years ago to 3 million. But recent work indicates a divergence between the Pediculus subspecies at 170,000 years ago. This timing puts clothing far earlier than many estimates and well before humans would have needed them for warmth. It’s also well after humans lost their body hair, so for awhile there, our ancestors were wandering around naked and smooth, until a snake came out from behind a tree and…oh, never mind.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/02/14/of-lice-and-men-an-itchy-history/




It means that it must had happened during second to last Ice Age. It must have gotten a bit chilly during this time in Africa, or the clothing lice are of Neanderthal's heritage.
 
What's the timeline on cultivating textile fibres? I know that linseed has been found near to the Lake Constance in settlements dated to the 5th millennium BC, but I suppose the cultivation and use of linen (flax) dates back far earlier (Ethiopia? Egypt?). Cotton may have been around the Indus valley for a long time. Anybody having a clue?
 
What's the timeline on cultivating textile fibres? I know that linseed has been found near to the Lake Constance in settlements dated to the 5th millennium BC, but I suppose the cultivation and use of linen (flax) dates back far earlier (Ethiopia? Egypt?). Cotton may have been around the Indus valley for a long time. Anybody having a clue?
It will be hard to find out. Linens decay rather quickly, so the earliest signs of clothing fibers come from imprints of pottery makers' garment on some pots they were making.
My guess would be at the beginning of Neolithic in Near East.
 
Flax is native to the eastern Mediterranean all the way to India. Some scholars believe the earliest cultivation, based on the diversity of the seeds, is India. Others look to Iran and a spread in all directions from there.

The earliest indication (30,000 ybp)of the use of flax fibers is from a cave in Georgia. The flax grew wild in the vicinity of the cave, apparently. I have my doubts that they were actually weaving the flax fibers, as in weaving with a loom, although it's clear that they dyed the fibers. They could easily have braided them or used them to make macrame like decorations, or perhaps as thread to sew skins together.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/oldest-known-fibers-discovered/

The earliest example of actual woven linen cloth is, to my knowledge, from Gobekli Tepi in Anatolia, 7,000 B.C.
"Renewed work within B.52 uncovered a burial containing a cloth made from flax. This cloth was actually wrapped around an infant."

http://www.catalhoyuk.com/downloads/Catal_News_2013.pdf
 
It will be hard to find out. Linens decay rather quickly, so the earliest signs of clothing fibers come from imprints of pottery makers' garment on some pots they were making.
My guess would be at the beginning of Neolithic in Near East.
As concerns linen, I'd rather think of Ethiopia. Linseed is a key element of the traditional diet, and flax is being planted in one phase of their traditional seven-years crop rotation cycle (though I don't have an idea when that cycle was established).
 

This thread has been viewed 49281 times.

Back
Top