History of hide materials

Humanity has used animal hides since the Paleolithic[clarification needed], for clothing as well as mobile shelters such as tipis and wigwams, and household items.

[citation needed] Ian Gilligan (Australian National University) has argued convincingly that hominids without fur would have needed leather clothing to survive outside the tropics in mid-latitude Eurasia, southern Africa, and the Levant during the cold glacial and stadial periods of the Ice Age, and there is archaeological evidence for the use of hide and leather in the Paleolithic.

[1] Simple, unmodified stone flakes could have been used to scrape hides for tanning, but scraper tools are more specialized for tasks such as woodworking and hideworking.

[1]: 19–20, 37  Both of these stone tool shapes were invented in the Oldowan,[2]: 61, 66–67  but direct evidence for hideworking has not been found from earlier than about 400,000 years ago.

[3] The earliest known bone awls date to between 84,000 and 72,000 years ago in South Africa, and their use-wear shows that they were probably used to pierce soft materials, such as tanned leather.

[1]: 49 Paleolithic hunters are also known to have targeted fur-bearing animals, such as wolves and arctic foxes in Europe, snow leopards in Central Asia, mole-rats in Africa, and red-necked wallabies in Tasmania.

Another, possibly older, piece of leather was found in Guitarrero Cave in northern Peru, dating to the Archaic period.