History of clothing and textiles
study of fashion and clothing by period in time
The study of the history of clothing and textiles traces the development, use, and availability of clothing and textiles over human history. Clothing and textiles reflect the materials and technologies available in different civilizations at different times. The variety and distribution of clothing and textiles within a society reveal social customs and culture.
The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of most human societies. 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. As early clothing was biodegradable, evidence of when humans started wearing clothes, and what these clothes were made of, has been difficult for scientists to determine. The earliest dates come from studies on the evolution of clothing lice, which suggest humans were wearing clothes sometime between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. Evidence of silk weaving has been found in China dating to 8,500 years ago. The earliest evidence of cotton being used comes from cotton fibers which had mineralized inside copper beads found in the Indus Valley at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh, dating to c. 6000 BC. Cotton spinning began in India c.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of clothing and textiles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.