How Did Ancient Humans Turn Animal Skins Into Clothes?

Say you have an animal hide big enough to wrap around yourself. Pull the two edges together and you are warmer already. Now try picking something up with both hands. This video follows what it took to turn that hide into something a person could move in: scraping the flesh off without cutting through, keeping the dried skin from going stiff, and then the objects that survive from the work. Rib-bone smoothers from two Neanderthal sites in southwestern France. A shoe from Areni cave in Armenia, about five and a half thousand years old, one piece of leather gathered around the foot with a cord. A bone from Canyars in Spain with twenty-eight shallow pits, read by Luc Doyon's team as a board for punching holes in leather. Eyed needles. And the coat of Ötzi, the man preserved in Alpine ice, stitched from strips of goat and sheep hide, worn with two separate leggings tied to a belt, its torn seams repaired with grass fibre. These finds come from different periods and places. The video uses each to understand one part of the work, and says where a reading is the researchers' interpretation. CHAPTERS 0:00 The hide in your hands 0:30 Flesh, scrape, stiff 1:08 Collagen, fat, water, smoke 2:22 The tool outlives the hide 3:20 The shop shirt 4:13 Areni: one piece, a cord, a heel 5:21 Canyars: twenty-eight pits 6:30 The eyed needle 7:19 Ötzi's coat: four skins 8:00 Two leggings, a belt, loops 8:58 Seams undone, grass REFERENCES Dignard C, Mason J. Caring for leather, skin and fur. Canadian Conservation Institute. https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation... Soressi M et al. (2013). Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe. PNAS 110(35):14186-14190. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Martisius NL et al. (2020). Non-destructive ZooMS identification reveals strategic bone tool raw material selection by Neandertals. Scientific Reports 10:7746. https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159... Pinhasi R et al. (2010). First Direct Evidence of Chalcolithic Footwear from the Near Eastern Highlands. PLOS ONE 5(6):e10984. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Doyon L et al. (2023). A 39,600-year-old leather punch board from Canyars, Gavà, Spain. Science Advances 9:eadg0834. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Smithsonian Human Origins Program. Bone and Ivory Needles. https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/... South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. Ötzi's clothing. https://www.iceman.it/en/oetzi/clothing O'Sullivan NJ et al. (2016). A whole mitochondria analysis of the Tyrolean Iceman's leather provides insights into the animal sources of Copper Age clothing. Scientific Reports 6:31279. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep31279 DISCLAIMER The ancient scenes in this video are reconstructions drawn to illustrate the narration. The hide-preparation methods are documented conservation and Indigenous practices used to understand the work, not a proven recipe for every prehistoric human. The Neanderthal lissoirs, the Canyars bone, the Areni shoe and Ötzi's clothing come from different periods and places; the video uses each to understand one part of the work and does not present them as one continuous history. The reading of the Canyars bone as a backing board for punching leather is the researchers' interpretation, and the video says so. Every drawing in this video was made for it. Narration is synthesized speech. #ancienthumans #prehistory #stoneage #humanevolution