History, as told by a dress

Fashion is not frivolous

Homo Erectus wore a skirt.

What?

Yeah, male or female, the skirt was the thing. And, here’s where I go out on a limb, I think that Creator gave him, Homo Erectus, and his wife, the divine spark.

I am not a paleontologist. I am a long time student of history. The study of history covers much ground, from the beginning of humanity, to what happened in 2020. Most historians specialize in a specific era. Me? I cover the past million years. Why? Because humanity intrigues.  I have many questions about humans. Like, what is it about us that a god sent down his son to die for us? Or, put another way, why did Prometheus think we were worth the price of the fire?

My current project is on the history of clothing. Yes, the humble dres

s has a story to tell. The series is titled, Dressing for the Ages, history as told by a dress.  I’ve been doing this series as live lectures-you know in front of an audience-for years. Now, it’s being recorded and anyone anywhere can have access to it for a few shekels. But I digress. The question that I asked as I prepared the script, was this: when did humans begin clothing themselves?

You know what they say, about one question leading to another?

So much of the history that we study is crowded around recorded history. Anything going back before 4000 bc gets tossed into the archeology and paleontology bin. Since much of my work centers on mythology, where we came from is a constant think with me. Civilization, and how humans made the journey from nomads to settled people, is what intrigues. The evolution from building huts to 90 story buildings, and from wearing animal skins to a dress made from silk is the real story of humanity.

Because the evolution of a dress is about the history of tools, engineering, and structures. When I began reading about Göbekli Tepe, which is some 12,000 years old, meaning, humans have been doing this civilized thing long before anyone wrote down anything in Genesis, what does that mean in terms of our long distant past?

Like so many of us, I learned the Adam and Eve, and God, myth about the creation of the world, and humans.  Over the years, as I studied more creation myths, I realized the story of the creation of the Earth is rather universal. Meaning, polytheists also believed that there was a divine creator in charge of the process. However, we cannot know this as fact. The only ancient literature that expressed this truth is the Rig Veda that says we don’t really know who created the universe, and we will never know.

Those Hindus are too practical.

Back to our program. Humans, and I include all the uprights here, have been hanging out for a rather long time, in terms of biology. When we look at our planet, clocking in at 4.5 billion years, the human experience, at 2.5 million, is new. We are not only young, we are stupid. The evidence of our stupidity is our penchant to be dichotomous. The hypocrisy of the human race is rather pronounced right now, I mean, truly in our face. This can mean it is time for humans to take a big nose dive into the pit of hell so that we can regroup, reform, and stop being assholes.

Jesus, the monotheists big player, warned us about our inner conflicts which translate to trouble with others. However, this is recorded history stuff. In chapter 1,  I address the issue of when did humans start wearing clothes.

It begins, mythologically speaking, with Adam and Eve, and one of the basic meanings of their story. Because when we look at the Biblical stories as just that, stories, and stop taking them as history, we peer deeply into the reasons of why we do the things we do.

The Adam and Eve story is about clothes. Not the how, but the why of clothing, is explained.

I explore the how of clothing as well. That is all about tools. Tools are the meat on the plate. I now understand why paleontologists and archaeologist are so into tools! Human growth is measured by how well they can make their tools, which gets them to the next level of existence. It’s like this: when you can sharpen a club into an ax, you can then make arrowheads which you can put on the end of a stick, and then, you can then kill bigger and better game. When you can kill bigger beasts, you get more food, and skins, and furs. Then you move on to a knife, and a knife will get you a pair of rudimentary scissors.

Do you see where this is going?

Yes, those inventors and engineers move us forward. Without those brains among us, we would still live in huts eating leftover animal carcasses for dinner. And would we be clothed? No. Nor would we have moved north to get away from the droughts. And would we have learned to control fire? And would we speak?

All this is from thinking about clothes, and their genesis.

Our world is deliciously complex.

Paleontologists and archeologists have figured out much, and they have so much more to figure out. Better tools in the future will move these sciences forward. The question I still ask is what sparked us into the great leap forward, from Erectus to Sapiens. Did Erectus morph or did Sapiens generate from some other source? And how does the creator deity play into this? Are the Vedas right, that we will never know?

All I wanted is to tell the story of a dress, and look where it got me.

The fact is, fashion is not frivolous.