History of clothing and textiles

There has always been some disagreement among scientists on when humans began wearing clothes, but newer studies from The University of Florida involving the evolution of body lice suggest it started sometime around 170,000 years ago.

Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat, and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates.

[2] A recent archaeological excavation from Neolithic Mehrgarh revealed in the article Analysis of Mineralized Fibres from a Copper Bead, that cotton fibers were used in the Indus Valley c. 7000 BC.

[3] Textiles can be felt or spun fibers made into yarn and subsequently netted, looped, knit or woven to make fabrics which appeared in the Middle East during the late Stone Age.

Nonetheless, scientists have never agreed on when humans began wearing clothes and the estimates suggested by various experts have ranged greatly, from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago.

The rationale for this method of dating stems from the fact that the human body louse (P. humanus corporus) cannot live outside of clothing, dying after only a few hours without shelter.

Some other Western Europe figurines were adorned with basket hats or caps, belts were worn at the waist, and a strap of cloth wrapped around the body right above the breast.

However, according to archeologists James M. Adovasio, Soffer and Hyland, the garments are more likely ritual wear, real or imagined, which served as a signifier of distinct social categories.

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern world.

The exchange of luxury textiles was predominant on the Silk Road, which linked traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods.

Women's dresses featured more varied designs: with or without sleeves, narrow or wide, usually long and without highlighting the body[32] Excavations of Indus Valley civilization sites to date have yielded a few twisted cotton threads, in the context of a connecting cord for a bead necklace.

Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, mentions Indian cotton in the 5th century BCE as "a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep."

[38] The earliest evidence of silk production in China was found at the sites of Yangshao culture in Xia, Shanxi, where a cocoon of bombyx mori, the domesticated silkworm, cut in half by a sharp knife is dated to between 5000 and 3000 BC.

Contrary to the assumptions that these early raids in the Andes mountains were executed exclusively by men, Edward A. Jolie's research indicates that women must have been among these settlers as well.

[45] Hemp fibers were also discovered in the Torihama shell mound, Fukui Prefecture, dating back to the Jōmon period, suggesting that these plants could also have been used for clothing.

There is a common Japanese belief that the Yayoi time period was quite utopian before Chinese influence began to promote the use of clothing to indicate age and gender.

In Panay, the word kurong, meaning curly hair, was applied to any short skirt or blouse; and some better ones made of imported chintz or calico were simply called by the name of the cloth itself, tabas.

The most prestigious kind of pudong, limited to the most valiant, was, like their G-strings, made of pinayusan, a gauze-thin abaca of fibers selected for their whiteness, tie-dyed a deep scarlet in patterns as fine as embroidery, and burnished to a silky sheen.

Ancient Greek clothing consisted of lengths of wool or linen, generally rectangular and secured at the shoulders with ornamented pins called fibulae and belted with a sash.

The toga of ancient Rome was also an unsewn length of wool cloth, worn by male citizens draped around the body in various fashions, over a simple tunic.

Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland authored Textiles and Clothing: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, c.1150-c.1450 (Boydell Press, 2001).

The topic is also the subject of an annual series, Medieval Clothing and Textiles (Boydell Press), edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

[66] A fashion for mi-parti or parti-coloured garments made of two contrasting fabrics, one on each side, arose for men in mid-century,[67] and was especially popular at the English court.

[61][69] As prosperity grew in the 15th century, the urban middle classes, including skilled workers, began to wear more complex clothes that followed, at a distance, the fashions set by the elites.

[70] By the first half of the 16th century, the clothing of the Low Countries, German states, and Scandinavia had developed in a different direction than that of England, France, and Italy, although all absorbed the sobering and formal influence of Spanish dress after the mid-1520s.

Geometric reticella deriving from cutwork was elaborated into true needlelace or punto in aria (called in England "point lace"), which reflected the scrolling floral designs popular for embroidery.

Across North America, native people constructed clothing using natural fibers such as cotton and agave as well as leather skins from animals such as deer or beavers.

Men continued to wear the coat, waistcoat and breeches for both full dress and undress; these were now sometimes made of the same fabric and trim, signalling the birth of the three-piece suit.

[88] Doctors such as Alice Bunker Stockham counseled patients against them, particularly during maternity; reformist and activist Catharine Beecher was one of the few to defy propriety norms and discuss the gynecological issues resulting from lifelong corset usage, in particular uterine prolapse.

[99] The changing lifestyles, activities, and demands of the 20th century favored clothing producers who could more effectively make their products have desired properties, such as increased strength, elasticity, or durability.