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The First Clothing The evolution of clothing is probably a Neanderthal invention, occurring sometime after 100,000 BC, when the roles of the different sexes began to specialize. Differentiation of sex roles may contribute to the invention of cosmetics, in particular ocher sometime before 50,000 BC. Ocher is employed as a decoration and for camouflage and it is still being used today as a body colorant. By 35,000 BC, Cro-Magnon people living at Cavillon, France wear jewelry and are ornamented with bracelets, anklets, collars, and pendants. Hairpins help arrange the coiffure, and buttons fasten together skin garments. By 25,000 clothing is being tailored, and by 20,000 BC sewing needles and thread are perfected. The domestication of animals and plants, around 8,000 BC, coupled with the invention of the loom, enables cloth to be woven. At first the cloth is woven from flax, but other fibers, also from animals (including wool) are soon developed. Some stone age cultures continue on the planet into the present era, where they coexist with the post-nuclear era. Extensive contact with the modern world and the issues of availing primitive peoples technologies like smallpox vaccinations erodes the cultures and makes their study increasingly difficult. Luckily, extensive documentation has been created in written accounts, and by photographs, and cinematography since the 19th century. Primitive costumes thus coexist in the current age, both before bikini and after it. And bikini suggests that primitive costumes will continue to be rediscovered and adopted by modern cultures as well, as in the 1990s adoption of corporal decoration. The classification and paths of evolution of primitive costumes has been theorized by one of the most important Bikini Scientists in history, J. C. Flugel, who wrote The Psychology of Clothes 16 years before the bikini was discovered. Flugel bifurcates primitive dress into two categories: tropical costume and arctic costume. Tropical Costume Tropical costume is worn where there is no need for clothing to keep warm. Theories for the adoption of tropical costumes include demonstrations of superiority, hiding of the sex and excretory organs, hiding pubic hair beyond puberty, and the separation of ones self from the animal world. Cloths make people godlike, and are a device to segregate classes and genders; slaves are often kept naked; females are often handicapped with veils, weights around the lower legs, hobbles, and high heels. In many religions sin is first associated with nakedness; shame with uncovering the sexual parts. Primitive costume includes body painting, tattooing and scarification, which serve as a substitute for clothes. The simplest tropical costume is a ring, or waistband, worn around the waist and hips (LL5906). Other simple costume includes rings or ornaments around the neck, wrists, and ankles; broaches on the bosom; and a fig leaf or penis shell to obscure the genitals. All of these costumes may be worn seule (by themselves with the subject being otherwise nude), in combinations, or with ornamental details (JF192201). Over time the waistband may evolve to an apron (LL5908) or, in official Bikini Science parlance, a loincloth. The loincloth is free to evolve in two directions: if it is gathered through the crotch and up the posterior rugae of the buttock then it becomes what in modern parlance is called a g-string. If it evolves sideways it becomes a miniskirt, and eventually, a skirt. The skirt may or may not evolve upward to cover the breasts and become a dress, or close around the legs and become pants. All of these costumes remain in use, and are discussed in Culotte Defined. Arctic Costume The basic Arctic costume is a shirt and pants, developed by Mongolians and northern cultures. A shirt is a garment for the top of the body with a collar, sleeves of various lengths, and a front closing. Pants are a garment worn on the lower half of the body and covering the pelvis and leg from the waist to the ankle. Pants always involve a legline. Sapiens do not always wear clothes in cold environments, although it does confers an ecological advantage against heat loss. Arctic costume has evolved south and is the standard costume found in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Another kind of costume, found in both tropical and Arctic costume, is the cloak, a garment which gathers around the body. The Dual of Body and Clothes Clothes eliminate innocence. Their very presence on our body serve to cover up some parts and leave other parts exposed, and in doing so they shape and mold perception. Together the body and clothes form a singularity which is two things at once, a yin and a yang, which glorify each other. |
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