When did hominids first wear clothes? Is this known or merely a matter of speculation & SWAG’s (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guesses) which are better than Wag’s? Did the earliest Homo Sapiens (circa 200,000 years ago) wear any type of clothes or did they do their hunting/gathering naked? Did any of the hominid predecessors of Homo Sapiens wear clothes? What about the Neandertals & the denosivans (? Spelling) ?
http://news.discovery.com/human/humans-first-wore-clothing-170000-years-ago.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106164616.htm http://www.examiner.com/paelenotology-science-news-in-national/lice-date-first-human-use-of-clothing
These articles say that H. sapiens started wearing clothes 170KYA, and that this correlates with migration to colder latitudes. But the first evidence we have of our species successfully migrating out of Africa is 60KYA, and those guys went straight to Australia. The second wave left 10K years later, and the first evidence we have of any of their descendants reaching Ice-Age Europe, where they would need the protection, is more like 30KYA. Do you suppose it could have been the Neanderthals who wore the first clothes and caused the speciation of body lice? They were living in Europe long before 170KYA. Anthropologists say that they were not buoyant and would have been terrible swimmers, which implies that they didn't have much body fat. Body fat is an insulator, in fact most arctic animals are covered with generous layers of it. So whenever an ice age came along periodically, the Neanderthals would have needed the clothing before we did!
