Morning nudists!!

Ya..

Well you know how we have clothes and all?

Today I learned we have no idea when humans started wearing them..

Which, then, begs the obvious question: when did we stop being naked??

We go to 1913:

Standing there is this archaeologist, Flinders Petrie

Now, he’s not actually just standing there no no.

He’s digging up an Egyptian cemetery.

When he opens this tomb he finds..

Ya, nothing really.

5 jars, 2 handles, and a pile of dirty laundry.

But 60 years later, these museum people start going through this box of nothing

And they realize that dirty laundry is ACTUALLY a perfectly preserved linen dress

..To be exact.

5,500 years old.

So that’s when we stopped being naked, right??

No.

Then they found these 30,000 year old woven flax fibers

We know they’re clothes because here:

They tied little knots and dyed ‘em pink.

Bit of a problem, though..

Clothes rot.

So we couldn’t go back further..

Until–

What’s that?

Oh wow, louse. Like one lice?

Now, there’s TWO kinds of lice.

Head lice:

And body lice:

And the trick is body lice don’t live on your body..

They live in your clothes

So researchers sequence lice DNA

And figure out when head lice split off and started being body lice

This would be the smoking gun! This is when clothes were invented!!

It was 170 THOUSAND years ago!!

Stay Itchy,
Henry & Dylan 🌈

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