How Ancient Humans Survived Winter (You Wouldn't)

#survival #humanhistory #archaeology How Ancient Humans Survived Winter (You Wouldn't) All research and sources are linked below. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ The lice clock, first run — "Molecular evolution of Pediculus humanus and the origin of clothing" (2003, Current Biology). Head lice and body lice split roughly 70,000 years ago, and body lice cannot exist without clothing to live in. ▸ The lice clock, re-run with more data — "Origin of clothing lice indicates early clothing use by anatomically modern humans in Africa" (2011, Molecular Biology and Evolution). Pushed the floor back to at least 83,000 years, with an upper estimate reaching toward 170,000. ▸ The oldest surviving fibre — "30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers" (2009, Science). Dyed and twisted flax from Dzudzuana Cave, Georgia — the oldest actual textile anyone has ever excavated, and still three times younger than the lice date. ▸ Simple versus complex clothing — Ian Gilligan's thermal model of palaeolithic clothing, which separates draped hides from fitted, layered, tailored garments and argues only the second kind makes extreme cold survivable. ▸ The eyed needle from Denisova Cave — excavated in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia and reported by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Bird bone, roughly 50,000 years old. ▸ Ötzi's clothing — "A whole mitochondria analysis of the Tyrolean Iceman's leather provides insights into the animal sources of Copper Age clothing" (2016, Scientific Reports). DNA from his garments identified goat, sheep, cattle, brown bear and roe deer. ———————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Ralf Kittler — Led the 2003 team that first ran a molecular clock on human lice. Because body lice live in clothing rather than on skin, the moment they split from head lice is the moment humans started wearing clothes regularly. His answer came back around 70,000 years. ▸ Melissa Toups — Led the 2011 re-run with a far larger dataset, pushing the floor back to at least 83,000 years. Even the most conservative version of that estimate makes clothing three times older than any surviving scrap of fabric on Earth. ▸ Denisova Cave — A cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. Among its finds is an eyed needle made from bird bone, roughly 50,000 years old — somebody ground a splinter thin and drilled a hole through the blunt end small enough to take a thread, by firelight, in a cave. ▸ Dzudzuana Cave — A site in Georgia that produced twisted and dyed flax fibres around 30,000 years old. It is the oldest textile ever excavated, and it is still vastly younger than the date the lice give us. ▸ Ötzi the Iceman — A man who died on a high alpine pass around 5,300 years ago and came out of the ice in 1991, fully dressed. His outfit used at least five animal species chosen for different properties, including bear hide for the soles of his shoes and dry grass packed inside them as a replaceable insulation layer. ▸ Neanderthals — Lived through multiple ice ages in Europe with bodies measurably better adapted to cold than ours. We have excavated thousands of their scrapers, blades, awls and hand axes, and not one confirmed eyed needle. ———————————————— 🎨 Animation by Finn Explains ———————————————— #ancienthumans #prehistory #humanhistory #archaeology #stoneage #anthropology #history #explainer #animation #education #paleolithic #iceage #clothing #neanderthal #otzi #denisova #survival #humanevolution