人類17萬年前纔開始穿衣

Modern humans started wearing clothing about 170,000 years ago, 70,000 years before they moved into colder climates and higher latitudes, according to a US researcher。

To find out when modern human began to put dresses on, David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History, used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice。

"We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing," Reed said. "Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn't exist until clothing came about in humans."

The study suggests humans lost body hair about 1 million years ago while they started to wear clothes 170,000 years ago, meaning humans spent a considerable amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed added。

據合衆國際社7日報道，一名美國研究人員稱，人類穿衣服始於17萬年前，比人類遷移到氣候更冷、緯度更高地區的時間早了7萬年。

爲了確定人類何時開始穿衣服，佛羅里達自然歷史博物館研究哺乳動物的副館長戴維•裏德利用脫氧核糖核酸序列來計算衣服上的蝨子從何時起開始與人類頭上的蝨子出現基因差異。

“我們想要找到另一種方法，以確定人類可能從何時開始穿衣服，”裏德說。“因爲他們很好地適應了衣服，所以我們知道身體上的蝨子或衣服上的蝨子在人類穿上衣服之前幾乎肯定不存在。”

裏德還稱，研究顯示人類在大約100萬年前脫去了體毛，而在17萬年前纔開始穿衣服，這意味着人類在相當長的一段時間裏既無體毛也不穿衣服。