Sewing

When we talk about human technology, what goes through your mind? Is it the internet, AI, and self-driving cars? Maybe the newest televisions, now far cheaper and way better than anything available ten years ago, or the latest delivery drones.

Maybe your mind turns earlier, to the Industrial Revolution, when machines began to do physical tasks better, faster, or cheaper (or all three) than humans could do them.

All of this is technology, but so is something much, much older. Let’s turn back much earlier, to the time before the Agricultural Revolution, back in the time when most tools were made of stone.

Today, let’s talk a little bit about sewing.

Picking up a needle and stitching two pieces of fabric together might not seem like a technological innovation, but that’s exactly what it was, and it changed our human experience forever.

The earliest evidence of sewing stretches back more than 20,000 years ago, and there’s a good reason to believe it may go back even further. This is called …