The oldest physical remains of sewn clothing have been discovered in an Oregon cave, representing a vital turning point in the development of human culture.
That’s according to a new paper by a group of researchers published Feb. 4 in the journal Science Advances, which dated a piece of sewn hide back to the Late Pleistocene era at the end of the Ice Age, roughly 12,060 to 12,620 years ago.
According to researchers, the hide was likely sewn using bone needles, which have been found in other archaeological sites around the region.
Researchers found the scrap of processed hide, sewn with a cord made of plant fibers and animal hair, at Cougar Mountain Cave near Fort Rock in south-central Oregon. The cave is part of a cluster of archaeological sites that have yielded big discoveries in the past, most famously a pair of sagebrush bark sandals that are thought to the be the oldest pieces of identified clothing in the world at roughly 10,400 years old.
While the new scrap of sewn hide is even older, researchers could not unequivocally confirm that it was used as clothing. It may have also been used as part of a bag or shelter, according to the paper. However, if it is clothing, it would be a remarkable find: No article of clothing has ever been discovered from the Pleistocene era, researchers said.
The cord and hide samples could represent the oldest known example of human clothing.From Science Advances Vol. 12, No. 6. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC.
Indigenous peoples living in the Northern Great Basin at the time would have needed complex, multilayered clothing to survive in the cold climate, the researchers said. However, their findings also show that clothing may have not been solely utilitarian: Finer bone needles imply that clothing may have been not just stitched but adorned.
“Our results also highlight the role of clothing in human cultural evolution,” researchers wrote in the paper. “While the origin of clothing is tied directly to the physiological limitations of the human body, its function as a social and cultural mechanism is also critical to the history of humanity.”
Cougar Mountain Cave is in an Oregon region that is part of the Northern Great Basin, which stretches across northeast California and northwest Nevada. It is home to some of the oldest inhabited places in North America, dating back an estimated 14,500 years. The region contains the traditional homelands of the Klamath, Modoc and some bands of Northern Paiute peoples.