First Farmers Wanted Clothes, Not Food

Oct. 15, 2007 — People turned to farming to grow fiber for clothing, and not to provide food, says one researcher who challenges conventional ideas about the origins of agriculture.

Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University, says his theory also explains why Aboriginal Australians were not generally farmers.

Gilligan says they did not need fiber for clothing, so had no reason to grow crops like cotton.

He argues his case in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association.

"Conventional thinking assumes that the transition to farming was related to people's need to find new ways of getting food," said Gilligan. "That doesn't really make sense for a number of reasons."

It doesn't explain why cultivating plants and domesticating animals only started 10,000 years ago in some areas of the world.

Gilligan says a better explanation is climate.

In the northern hemisphere during the last ice age it was roughly 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than today, which led hunters and gatherers to develop sophisticated forms of clothing.

This included tailored and multilayered clothes, including underclothes, to keep out the cold winds, said Gilligan.

Animal hides and furs from hunted animals provided the most suitable warm clothing, he said.

But once the climate warmed, humans wanted lighter and more breathable clothing.

Textiles based on fiber crops such as cotton, linen and hemp and woolly animals like sheep and goats did the job.

At the same time, said Gilligan, clothing became important as a form of display and decoration.

But the story in Australia was different.

"In Australia, even in Tasmania, conditions were never so cold that Aboriginal people needed multilayered tailored garments," Gilligan said.

In this most severe environment, temperatures were only about 10 degrees lower than today. Aboriginal people habitually went without clothing and when they did wear something it was simple.