Dear colleagues and friends,
A dear colleague shares this article published on June 28, 2024 by University of Sydney (media contact, Liv Clayworth) and translated by us for this space. Let's see what they tell us about it...
A team of researchers led by an archaeologist from the University of Sydney is the first to suggest that eye needles were a new technological innovation used to adorn clothes for social and cultural purposes, marking the great change from clothing as protection to clothing as an expression of identity.
“Tools with needles with an eye are an important advance in prehistory because they document a transition in the function of clothing from utilitarian to social purposes”,
Says the Dr. Ian Gilligan, honorary associate in the discipline of Archaeology at the University of Sydney.
From the stone tools that prepared animal hides for humans to use as thermal insulation, to the advent of bone punches and needles with an eye to create tight and ornate garments, why did we start to dress to express ourselves and impress others?
Dr. Gilligan and his co-authors reinterpret the evidence of recent discoveries in the development of clothing in their new article in Science Advances, “Paleolithic Eyed Needles and the Evolution of Dress”.
“Why do we wear clothes? We assume it's part of being human, but once you look at different cultures, you realize that people existed and functioned perfectly in a society without clothes,” says Dr. Gilligan. “What intrigues me is the transition of clothing from being a physical need in certain environments to a social need in all environments.”
The first known needles with eyes appeared approximately 40,000 years ago in Siberia. Needles with eyes, one of the most emblematic Paleolithic artifacts of the Stone Age, are more difficult to manufacture compared to bone punches, which were enough to create tight garments. Bone punches are tools made from animal bones that are sharpened to a tip. Eye needles are modified bone punches, with a drilled hole (eye) to make it easier to sew tendons or thread.
As evidence suggests that bone punches were already used to create custom-made clothing, the innovation of eye needles may reflect the production of garments in more complex layers, as well as the adornment of clothing by placing beads and other small decorative elements on garments.
“We know that clothing until the last glacial cycle was only worn on an ad hoc basis. The classic tools we associate with that are skin scrapers or stone scrapers, and we find them appearing and disappearing during the different phases of the last glacial cycle of the ice ages,” explains Dr. Gilligan.
Dr. Gilligan and his co-authors argue that clothing became an element of decoration because traditional methods of body decoration, such as body painting with ochre or deliberate scarification, were not possible during the latter part of the last ice age in colder areas of Eurasia, since people needed to wear clothes all the time to survive.
“This is why the appearance of the needles with eyes is particularly important because it signals the use of clothing as decoration,” Dr. Gilligan says. “The needles with an eye would have been especially useful for the very fine stitching required to decorate clothes.”
Therefore, clothing evolved to serve not only a practical need for protection and comfort against external elements, but also a social and aesthetic function for individual and cultural identity.
The regular use of clothing allowed larger and more complex societies to form, as people could move to colder climates and at the same time cooperate with their tribe or community based on shared clothing styles and symbols. The skills associated with garment production contributed to a more sustainable lifestyle and improved the long-term survival and prosperity of human communities.
Covering the human body regardless of the weather is a social practice that has endured. Dr. Gilligan's future work goes beyond the advent of clothing as clothing and analyzes the psychological functions and effects of wearing clothing.
“We take it for granted that we are comfortable wearing clothes and uncomfortable if we don't wear clothes in public. But how does wearing clothes affect the way we look at ourselves, the way we see ourselves as human, and maybe how we see the environment around us?”
