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 the Paleolithic era. It’s important to note that the Paleolithic era was a lot colder than today. Much of North America, Europe, and Asia were covered in snow and ice.

Humans needed warm clothing to survive, and animal skins were a natural fit. The only problem was that they were very loose, meaning not terribly effective against the coldest conditions.

The idea of poking through an animal skin with something sharp wasn’t particularly new. Humans have been killing animals this way for at least hundreds of thousands of years, and perhaps more, depending on how you define human.

Still, the idea of doing this in order to bring a thread (an animal sinew or maybe a plant fiber) through to the other side, so that you could affix one piece of cloth to another? That was a true innovation.

Needles were fashioned from bones, antlers, or ivory. Thorns even proved useful as early sewing needles, although they had to be strong enough to pierce the fabric or fur. Unfortunately for archaeologists, all of these early materials are organic, so they decay rapidly. This makes dating the earliest sewing quite a challenge, and that’s part of the reason we’re pretty sure the practice goes back further than 20,000 years or so.

Thread was usually made from animal fibers. Tendons were really great for this purpose—flexible, tough, and tendons could be cut into very thin strips. Similarly, the intestines could be made into tough strips, and rawhide could be used to connect bigger pieces that needed less detailed sewing work.

Plant fibers could work, too, but the processing generally took more work, and more knowledge. Still, sometimes our ancient ancestors wove animal and plant fibers together into a new thread, introducing the idea of weaving into the world.

Thread doesn’t tend to survive, but plenty of evidence of thread has been left behind. Little holes in fabric that are evenly spaced are a bit of a giveaway. Some small Venus figurines hint at sewing, like fitted clothing or specific garments.

Think about what that did for us! Prior to sewing, we were essentially controlled by our environment. We’d go wherever we could survive, first and foremost making sure we ended up somewhere warm enough.

After sewing, we could travel much further out away from our tribe, exploring and expanding.

Sewing also opened up new possibilities for self-expression via clothing. Fashion predated sewn clothing, but the variety and ability to personalize something you wore was a game changer in this regard. Sewing probably deserves a long chapter in the long human book on social stratification, too.

Here’s another thing to consider: when someone knew how to sew, they were extremely valuable. This encouraged groups to have a more marked division of labor, and being able to trade the clothing your group created with other groups would have encouraged even more specialization.

Not only could we travel further now because we could stay warm, but we also had something unique and interesting to trade. An entire textile industry was born, and that would shape the modern world in unexpected ways over the next several thousand years.

And, here we are today, tens of thousands of years later. I tip my (sewn) hat to my ancient ancestors who invented sewing.