In popular culture, cave men and women are often draped in furs, but archaeological evidence of what our Stone Age ancestors actually wore and how they made clothes is thin.

Fur, leather and other organic materials generally aren’t preserved, especially beyond 100,000 years ago. However, researchers say 62 bone tools used to process and smooth animal skins found in a cave in Morocco may be some of the earliest proxy evidence for clothing in the archaeological record. The tools are between 90,000 and 120,000 years old.

“I wasn’t expecting to find them. I was studying this assemblage initially to look at the animal bones to reconstruct the human diet,” said Emily Yuko Hallett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History’s Pan African Evolution Research Group.

“And when I was going through them — there were around 12,000 animal bones — I started to notice these bones that had a very different shape. It wasn’t a natural shape. And they had sheen on them, and they were shiny, and they had striations (grooves or scratches) on them,” said Hallett, who was an author of a study on the findings that published Sept. 16 in the journal iScience.

Unlike the bones discarded after consuming an animal for food, bones used regularly by human hands gain a sheen and polish.

She also found a pattern of cut marks on other bones in the cave that suggested the humans who lived there were removing the skins of carnivores such as sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats, for their furs. The bones of cattle-like animals showed different markings, suggesting they were processed for meat.

Genetic studies of lice indicate that clothing lice diverged from their human head louse ancestors at least 83,000 years ago and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago, which suggests humans were wearing clothes before major migrations out of Africa.

Hallett said that one of 98 400,000-year-old tools made from elephant bone and recently discovered in Italy may have been used to smooth leather. They were likely used by Neanderthals. Eyed needles emerge in the archaeological record much later, about 40,000 years ago.

The bone tools from Morocco that Hallett discovered were shaped a bit like a spatula and would have been used to remove connective tissue. Similar bone tools are still used by some leather workers today, Hallett said.

“The reason people like using these tools is that they don’t pierce the skin, and so you’re left with an intact skin,” she said.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【光泽】 guāngzé sheen a smooth shine or brightness

【尼安德特人】 ní’āndétèrén Neanderthal an extinct species of human that was widely distributed in ice-age Europe between 120,000 and 35,000 years ago

在流行文化里，穴居人通常披着毛皮，但石器时代我们的祖先究竟穿什么，这方面的考古证据并不多。

10万年前的毛皮、皮革和其他有机材料通常无法保存下来。然而，研究人员称，在摩洛哥的一个洞穴中发现了62件用于处理和打磨动物皮革的骨器，这可能是考古发现中的最早关于人类着装的指向性证据之一。这些工具距今有9万至12万年的历史。

马克斯•普朗克人类历史科学研究所泛非进化研究小组的博士后研究员艾米莉•尤科•哈利特说：“我没想到会发现这些骨器。我研究这堆化石最初是为了观察动物骨骼，以重现人类的饮食。”

研究作者之一哈利特说：“当我检查这1万2千多块动物骨头时，我开始注意到这些骨头的形状非常不同。这不是自然的形状。它们很光滑，有光泽，表面有微小的擦痕。”9月16日，《交叉科学》杂志发表了这些研究结果。

与食用动物后丢弃的骨头不同，人手经常使用的骨头表面光滑、有光泽。

哈利特还在洞穴中的其他骨骼上发现了一种切割痕迹，这表明居住在那里的人类会剥掉沙狐、金豺和野猫等食肉动物的皮毛。牛骨等动物骨头则显示出不同的痕迹，表明它们是加工取肉的来源。

对虱子的基因研究表明，从头虱分化出来的衣虱至少在8万3千年前就出现了，也可能早在17万年前就存在，这表明人类在大规模迁出非洲之前就已经穿上了衣服。

哈利特说，最近在意大利发现的98件40万年前用大象骨头制成的工具中，有一种可能是用来打磨皮革的，很可能是尼安德特人使用的。缝纫针出现在考古记录中的时间要晚得多，距今约4万年前。

哈利特在摩洛哥发现的骨器形状有点像刮刀，可以用来去除结缔组织。哈利特说，今天一些皮匠仍在使用类似的骨制品。

她说：“人们喜欢使用这些工具的原因是它们不会刺伤皮面，这样能获得一块完好无损的皮革。”

(chinadaily.com.cn)