Long before there were looms or tailors, people in what is now Morocco were scraping hides and sorting the animals they killed by purpose, meat for the cooking fire and skins for warmth. Around ninety to a hundred and twenty thousand years ago, at Contrebandiers Cave, that quiet division of labor left marks that a patient researcher learned to read. The evidence speaks through objects rather than cloth, which has long since decayed, so it hints at a practice rather than proving it. It suggests that the human need to cover the body is nearly as old as the human habit of making tools.
Bone Tools from Moroccan Cave Suggest Humans Were Making Clothing 90,000–120,000 Years Ago
Herbivores for food, carnivores for pelts.
Mark
Why does a pile of bones from a cave tell us about fashion?
Mimi
Because Hallett was studying diet and found something else. Some of the 62 tools had a sheen and grooves, and a spatula-like shape suited to working hides.
Mark
What's the detail that sticks with you?
Mimi
The sorting. Cattle-like animals show butchery for meat, while sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats show skinning marks. Different animals, different uses.
Luke
Careful, though. Nobody found a garment. Clothing is inferred from tools and cut marks.
Mark
So how solid is it?
Luke
The tool shapes and skinning marks are observed. That they were made into clothing is the interpretation. The study says some tools appear to have been used for garments, which is not the same as proof.
Mimi
Fair. Skins could have served as bedding or covering too, and the source doesn't settle that.
Luke
And the 90,000 to 120,000 year range is wide. The reporting doesn't say how it was dated.
Mark
What happens next?
Mimi
Hallett wants archaeologists at older sites to look for the same skinning pattern on carnivore bones.
Il Polso
- A researcher sorting through 12,000 animal bones noticed that a handful did not look like food scraps at all.
- Sixty-two bone tools, polished and grooved, were pulled apart from the ordinary debris of meals.
- Cut marks on sand fox, golden jackal and wildcat bones point to skinning rather than eating.
- The study is inferential: no garment survived, so clothing is read from wear and shape alone.
- The authors now hope archaeologists at much older sites will look for the same skinning signature.
Long before there were looms or tailors, people in what is now Morocco were scraping hides and sorting the animals they killed by purpose, meat for the cooking fire and skins for warmth. Around ninety to a hundred and twenty thousand years ago, at Contrebandiers Cave, that quiet division of labor left marks that a patient researcher learned to read. The evidence speaks through objects rather than cloth, which has long since decayed, so it hints at a practice rather than proving it. It suggests that the human need to cover the body is nearly as old as the human habit of making tools.
Emily Yuko Hallett was not searching for clothing. As a postdoctoral scientist, she was working through a huge collection of animal bones from a Moroccan cave, trying to understand what its people had eaten. Then a few bones began to seem wrong. They had shapes nature does not make, shiny surfaces, and fine scratches. They were tools, not leftovers.
Hallett and her team identified 62 bone tools from Contrebandiers Cave, and their findings were published in iScience. Many were spatula-shaped and polished, which suited the work of scraping hides without piercing them. Dated to roughly 90,000 to 120,000 years ago, they suggest that the people who lived there were working skins into garments.
The cut marks on carnivore bones strengthened the picture. Sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats had been skinned, and the study proposes their pelts were worn. Cattle-like animals, by contrast, were butchered for meat, so the cave's residents sorted their catch by purpose. Hallett is most excited by that skinning pattern, which she had not seen described before, and hopes older sites will be checked for it. The evidence remains inferential, since no garment itself survived.
Emily Yuko Hallett was not looking for clothing. She was a postdoctoral scientist working through a collection of roughly 12,000 animal bones from a cave in Morocco, trying to reconstruct what the people who lived there had eaten. Then she began to notice a handful of bones that did not look right.
They had the wrong shape, she told CNN, nothing like what nature produces. They were shiny, with a sheen on the surface, and marked with fine grooves or scratches called striations. These were not leftovers from a meal. They were tools.
In all, Hallett and her team identified 62 bone tools from Contrebandiers Cave. Their findings were published Thursday in the journal iScience. Some of the tools, the researchers concluded, appear to have been used not for food but for making garments. The material dates to roughly 90,000 to 120,000 years ago, which would make it rare evidence of early humans wearing clothing, and of what kind of clothing they wore.
Hallett said the tools are distinct from the bones people threw away after eating an animal. They are somewhat spatula-shaped and carry that polish. She explained why such tools were favored for working hides: they do not pierce the skin, leaving the skin intact.
The cut marks on other bones from the cave added to the picture. They show that the cave's former residents were removing the skins of local predators. According to the study, the animals included sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats, and the researchers wrote that people were dressing in their skins and furs. The bones of cattle-like animals in the cave, by contrast, bore marks consistent with butchering for meat. So the animals were sorted by purpose: herbivores for food, carnivores for pelts.
Hallett said the skinning marks on the carnivore bones are what excite her most, because she had not seen that pattern described before. Her hope is that archaeologists working at much older sites will start looking for it too. If they find it, the history of clothing could stretch back further than this cave can show.
The evidence is inferential. The study did not recover garments; it reads clothing-making from tool shapes, wear and cut marks on bones.
Citazioni salienti
I'm most excited about the skinning marks on the carnivores because I haven't seen this pattern described before.— Emily Yuko Hallett, lead author
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