First clothing put at 170,000 years ago

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A U.S. researcher says his study of the evolution of lice shows modern humans started wearing clothing about 170,000 years ago.

David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus, used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice, ScienceDaily.com reported Friday.

"We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing," Reed said. "Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn't exist until clothing came about in humans."

The findings suggest modern humans started wearing clothes about 70,000 years before migrating into colder climates and higher latitudes, a move that began about 100,000 years ago.

The study suggests humans started wearing clothes well after they lost body hair, which genetic skin-coloration research puts at about 1 million years ago, meaning humans spent a considerable amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed said.

"It's interesting to think humans were able to survive in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years without clothing and without body hair, and that it wasn't until they had clothing that modern humans were then moving out of Africa into other parts of the world," Reed said.