The First Clothes
by Over 5,000 years ago, there were no shopping malls or tailors. Still, people wore clothes, both to look nice and to stay warm.
The very first clothes were made from the skins of animals like mammoths, bison, deer and bears, wrapped around people’s bodies. The skins helped to keep people warm, but they were most likely uncomfortable, as well as being smelly and dirty. Later, people learned how to clean and prepare the skins, by stretching them out, pinning them to the ground with wooden pegs, and scraping off the fat. To make skins soft, they might chew them, soak and beaten them, or rub them with oil.
About 40,000 years ago, people started to sew for the first time. Thread was made from strips of animal gut or skin, or from parts of plants. Sewing allowed people to create more complex kinds of clothing. To make sewing easier, a tool called a borer was used to make holes in skins before the needle (often made of bone) was passed through.
People first kept sheep about 10,000 years ago, as they started to use sheep’s wool to make cloth. To make the cloth, people wove the wool, or in some cases the flax, on large looms. The loom held one set of threads in place, while the weaver passed another thread between them. Dyes, made from things like leaves, berries and ground rocks, were later used to change the color of the cloth.
Image via Wikipedia
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