A stitch in time saved America's first settlers, scientists say
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 5, 2004
About 15,000 years ago, people from Siberia very likely crossed what is a now-sunken land bridge to reach Alaska, becoming the first settlers in the Americas.
Some contend that people arrived here thousands of years earlier. But whenever they came, experts say, America's first residents probably couldn't have reached here without a piece of simple technology that's with us today.
The sewing needle.
Researchers who have examined ancient remains now say that without needle and thread to create warm clothing, the Arctic would have been uninhabitable and humans never would have made it to Siberia in the first place.
"It was a critical invention. It played a major role in our ability to adapt to really cold environments," said John Hoffecker, a researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Hoffecker was among a group of U.S. and Russian researchers who discovered remnants of what might be the world's oldest known sewing needles at a Russian archaeological site. The 30,000-year-old needles, unearthed three years ago about 250 miles south of Moscow, are small, pointed ivory sticks with eyelets that must have been handcrafted.
"They had to be gouged out or drilled, which is obviously difficult work, " Hoffecker said.
Scientists estimate that temperatures in that area 20,000 to 40,000 years ago -- the end of the last Ice Age -- were about 20 degrees colder than present-day Moscow. But the needles, along with remains of foxes and hares trapped at the Kostenki archaeological site, show people had settled and were adapting to the area's frigid climate.
"You have to ask yourself, if they weren't sewing warm clothing, how else were they surviving?" Hoffecker said.
Opinion on the role of needle and thread is far from unanimous, however. Some argue that settlers could survive chilly winters for centuries by covering themselves with furs. The availability of food was a more important factor in where people settled, they say.
"Needles are important, but they're not the crucial element that led to the conquest of the north. The issue was the availability of food," said Olga Soffer, an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign.
But proponents of the theory note that the sewing needle was a key development in many cultures. Although the earliest known needles have turned up in Russia, remnants of others believed to be at least 20,000 years old have been recovered all over Europe.
"They enhance survival and reproduction and they don't stay geographically isolated," said Richard Klein, a Stanford University anthropologist. "It's the absence of technology that was an impediment to living in the Arctic, not whether food was there. The food was always there."
Modern humans -- or most of them, anyway -- developed a need for clothing when they shed their body hair and migrated from Africa 60,000 to 100, 000 years ago. The first clothes probably were made without needles: loose- fitting furs and pelts taken from animals killed for food, experts say.
The perishable nature of fur and fabric make it nearly impossible for archaeologists to determine when and where the first clothing was worn. Archaeological sites are rife with fossilized bones and dinner plates. But try finding a good pair of pants.
"Clothing degrades," said Soffer, who worked in the New York fashion industry as a promoter for 10 years before becoming an anthropologist in the 1980s. "We haven't found the equivalent of a Lucy," she added, referring to a famous set of human remains found in Ethiopia in 1974 that provided a key link between human and ape.
Soffer's examination of 90 clay fragments from the walls and floors of ancient huts in the Czech Republic revealed that people wore handmade clothes as far back as 29,000 years ago. She drew that conclusion from impressions of woven fabric imbedded in the clay from the homes of the Gravettian tribes that roamed from Russia to Spain between 22,000 and 29,000 years ago.
The impressions show a variety of fine weaving techniques, including open and closed twining and plain weaving -- a type of weaving that would require a loom. She and other researchers compared the woven patterns in the clay to the garb on "Venus" figurines, a group of about 100 statues carved all over Europe up to 27,000 years ago. The most famous is the Venus of Willendorf, housed at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Soffer says that what scientists originally mistook for intricate hairstyles on the statues were actually intricately woven caps, sashes and string skirts. That indicates people were creating fabrics thousands of years ago. "We're not saying it's what was actually worn, but we are saying it's what was depicted in their art," Soffer said.
Elizabeth Barber, an archaeologist at Occidental College, said nailing down the date when clothing first appeared is difficult. "We'd be blasted with criticism if we ever tried to say when it started," she said. Even so, scientists are making headway.
Researchers in Germany concluded last year that humans probably began to wear clothing about 72,000 years ago, based on DNA evidence showing that this was the period when body lice -- a species dependent on clothing -- first evolved.
"Needles would've come along when clothing was pretty well developed," said Mark Stoneking, the researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who conducted the lice study.
Once out of Africa, modern humans spread quickly throughout Europe and Asia. Recent discoveries -- tools made from tusks and a rhinoceros bone shaped into a spear -- are evidence that people lived in the Russian Arctic as long ago as 40,000 years.
Modern humans shared Europe with Neanderthals for centuries before Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago. But scientists say what separated moderns from Neanderthals was an ability to craft technology that helped them survive.
"Neanderthals tanned hides, but they didn't have any tailored garments," Hoffecker said. "A fur or a hide has limitations. You can't move around in it. You can't go out and find lunch."
It wasn't just sewing needles that put moderns ahead. Experts credit early modern humans with slowly developing better housing and learning how to fish and take to the seas.
Humans began throwing hides over mammoth bones to create warmer housing in places such as Ukraine as far back as 50,000 years ago. In South Africa, archaeological sites show that people caught fish on hooks 50,000 years ago, and most researchers agree that to reach Australia, early humans must have been able to build rafts 50,000 to 60,000 years back.
Why people would choose an Arctic environment remains a mystery. Experts note a variety of possible factors, including the availability of food or a need to get away from hostile neighbors. "Anywhere people could live, they did, " Stanford's Klein said.
Clothing might have been created for more than just protection from the elements. Barber believes the first known use for clothing -- along with staying warm -- was to send social signals.
String skirts worn in what is now Eastern Europe 20,000 years ago served as a signal that a girl had reached puberty and was ready for marriage, Barber said. The tradition can still be seen in the string skirts worn with folk wear in Albania and some areas of the Balkans.
"I guess some things just never go out of style," she said.