• Question: When people evolved did they kill animals for there cloths or did they make them?

    Asked by eve909 to Ed, Sam, Steve, Vera on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      As far as I know, people initially used pelts for their clothes. Making clothes is pretty difficult – you have to source a fiber (like wool or plant fibers), turn them into a yarn, and then weave or knit the yarn into clothes. Some animal furs are also suitable for felting – this is basically turning animal hair into a thick mat of the shape you want (just like a rasta!). Felt is very warm and water repellent, but again this is also not easy to do.

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      I think that they probably did wear animal skins to start with, when they had clothes at all. I actually wonder why we lost our hair on our bodies at all, I am unsure what advantage this gave us?

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      One of the main theories for the evolution of hairlessness is that it helped ancestral humans keep cool on the hot savannah and allowed them to sweat, perhaps while running long distances to track and hunt prey.

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