Headdress of a primitive man. Clothing in primitive times

Everyone knows the answer to this question: of course, in the skins! It is worth pronouncing the words "primitive man", as in the imagination there is a picture either from a textbook, or from a popular booklet: a hefty fellow, whose torso is casually wrapped in a skin. There is another option: sexy beauties from the movie "Million years before our era", flaunting in a bikini made of skins.

As a rule, our knowledge of the wardrobe of a primitive man is limited to this. And no wonder. No clothes from those distant times have come down to us anyway. Who knows how they dressed there, in the Stone Age?

It turns out that scientists have figured it out.

Not far from Vladimir there is a famous site of a primitive man of the Upper Paleolithic era. According to the name of the river, not far from which it was found, the site is called Sungir. It was discovered in the 50s of the last century, its age is more than 50 thousand years. Two graves were found there. In one rested a man of about 50 years old, in the other - a boy and a girl of 13 and 10 years old. The clothes of these people, of course, have not been preserved. However, a huge number of bone beads, pendants, and various gizmos have come down to us, which scientists interpret as hairpins and fasteners. According to the order in which they lay on the remains of people, archaeologists managed to reconstruct the clothes of the deceased.

So, the ancient Sungir people were dressed almost exactly as the peoples of the Far North still dress to this day. This is not surprising, the era of glaciation, after all.

All three were wearing clothes that are called "kukhlyanka" or "malitsa" (different northern peoples have different names) - a deaf jacket with a hood. These jackets provide excellent protection from the cold. Modern Evenki and Chukchi, as well as our ancestors from Sungir, richly decorate their kukhlyankas, including sewing beads on them.

In addition to kukhlyanka, in the Upper Paleolithic era, fur pants and shoes were in fashion, which can be interpreted as the closest relative of moccasins. At the same time, the shoes were also richly decorated with beads.

On the heads of men were either caps or leather foreheads, decorated with animal fangs. But the girl was put on a headdress, which now we would call a bonnet or cap. Something like a hood, also trimmed with beads and pendants. Such fur caps are still worn by residents of the polar regions.

So the wardrobe of primitive man was not so poor. Moreover, we still use the developments of ancient fashion designers. Moccasins, Alaska jackets, hoods - who will you surprise with this now? The only thing is that the way of making and selling clothes and shoes has changed radically. Needless to say, today even on the Internet you can order high-quality clothes and shoes. Some sites even offer bespoke clothing designers.

The hunters of the last ice age were probably the first people to wear clothes. They needed it to protect them from the cold. Clothing was made from animal skins sewn together with strips of leather. Animal skins were first fixed on pegs and scraped. They were then washed and pulled tight over a wooden frame so that they would not shrink as they dried. The tough, dry skin was then softened and cut to make clothes.

The clothes were cut out, and holes were made along the edges with a pointed stone awl. Thanks to the holes, it was much easier to pierce the skins with a bone needle. Prehistoric people made pins and needles from fragments of bone and antler, which they then polished by grinding them on stone. Scraped skins were also used to make tents, bags, and bedding.

The first clothes consisted of simple trousers, tunics and raincoats, decorated with beads made of colored stones, teeth, shells. They also wore fur shoes tied with leather laces. Animals gave skin instead of cloth, tendons instead of thread, and bones instead of needles. Clothes made from animal skins protected from cold and rain and allowed primitive people to live in the far north.

Some time after the beginning of agriculture in the Middle East, wool began to be made into fabric. In other parts of the world, vegetable fibers such as flax, cotton, bast, and cactus were used for this purpose. The fabric was dyed and decorated with vegetable dyes.

Stone Age people used the flowers, stems, bark, and leaves of numerous plants to make dyes. The flowers of the dyer's gorse and the tinker's navel gave a range of colors - from bright yellow to brownish green.

Plants like indigo and woad provided a rich blue color, while walnut bark, leaves, and shells provided a reddish brown color. Plants were also used for dressing skins. The skin was softened by soaking in water with oak bark.

Both men and women in the Stone Age wore jewelry. Necklaces and pendants were made from all kinds of natural materials. Brightly colored stones, snail shells, fish bones, animal teeth, seashells, eggshells, nuts and seeds have all been used.

From rock paintings in caves and ornaments found in burials, we know of a wide variety of materials used in Stone Age jewelry. Shells were highly valued and some were traded over long distances. Other materials included deer teeth, mammoth and walrus tusks, fish bones, and bird feathers.

Later they also began to make beads - from semi-precious amber and jadeite, jet and clay. The beads were strung on thin strips of leather or twine made from plant fibers. Stone Age people believed that wearing a necklace made of leopard bones gave them magical powers.

Other decorations included bracelets made from elephant or mammoth tusk. Threads of shells and teeth were turned into beautiful head ornaments. Women braided their hair into braids and stabbed them with combs and pins. People probably painted their bodies and lined their eyes with dyes like red ocher. They may also have tattooed and pierced themselves.

The shape of the body and the way of life of a person determined the first primitive types of clothing. Animal skins or plant materials were woven into rectangular pieces and thrown over the shoulders or hips, tied or wrapped around the body horizontally, diagonally or in a spiral. So there were two main types of clothing at the point of attachment: shoulder and waist. Their most ancient form is draped clothing. She wrapped the body and kept with the help of ties, belts, clasps. Over time, a more complex form of clothing arose - an invoice, which could be deaf and swinging. The fabric panels began to be folded along the warp or weft and sewn on the sides, leaving slits for the hands in the upper part of the fold and cutting a hole for the head in the center of the fold. Overhead deaf clothes were put on over the head, the oar had a slit in front from top to bottom.

THE APPEARANCE OF CLOTHING AND ITS FUNCTIONS

Archaeological excavations show that clothing appeared at the earliest stages of human development. Already in the Paleolithic era, man was able, using bone needles, to sew, weave and bind various natural materials - leaves, straw, reeds, animal skins, to give them the desired shape. Natural materials were also used as headdresses, such as hollowed-out gourds, coconut shells, ostrich eggs, or tortoise shells.

Shoes appeared much later and were less common than other elements of the costume.

Clothing, like any object of arts and crafts, combines beauty and expediency, protecting the human body from cold and heat, precipitation and wind, it performs a practical function, and decorating it - aesthetic. It is difficult to say exactly which of the functions of clothing is more ancient ... Despite the cold, rain and snow, the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego went naked, and the East African tribes near the equator dressed in long fur coats made of goat skins during the holidays. Ancient frescoes of the 4th millennium BC. e. show that only people of noble classes wore clothes, while the rest went naked.

The direct predecessors of clothing are tattooing, painting the body and applying magical signs to it, with which people sought to protect themselves from evil spirits and incomprehensible forces of nature, to frighten enemies and win over friends. Subsequently, tattoo patterns began to be transferred to the fabric. For example, the multi-colored checkered pattern of the ancient Celts remained the national pattern of Scottish fabric. The shape of the body and the way of life of a person determined the first primitive forms of clothing. Animal skins or plant materials were woven into rectangular pieces and thrown over the shoulders or hips, tied or wrapped around the body horizontally, diagonally or in a spiral. This is how one of the main types of human clothing of primitive society appeared: draped clothing. Over time, more complex clothing arose: a consignment note, which could be deaf and swinging. The fabric panels began to be folded along the warp or weft and sewn on the sides, leaving slits for the hands in the upper part of the fold and a hole for the head in the center of the fold.

Overhead deaf clothes were put on over the head, the swing had a front cut from top to bottom. Draped and overlaid clothing has survived to this day as the main forms of attaching it to the human figure. Shoulder, waist, hip clothing is represented today by a variety of assortment, designs, cuts ... The historical development of the main forms of clothing took place in direct connection with the economic conditions of the era, aesthetic and moral requirements and the general artistic style in art. And changes in the style of an era are always associated with ideological shifts taking place in society. Within each style, there is a more mobile and short-term phenomenon - fashion, affecting all branches of human activity.

The first person to wear clothes, according to historians, was a hunter during the Ice Age. As you know, this period was characterized by a cold climate on the planet, which made the existence of primitive man especially uncomfortable. Clothing carried the function of protection from cold, wind and precipitation. It was made from the skins of various animals, it was rough, shapeless, but it performed the main function - it made it possible to live in the conditions of the north. The skins went through several stages of processing, namely: scraping, drying, softening and making sheets of the desired length and width.

The first stage consisted of animal skin fastened with stakes to the ground and scraped clean. After the skin was cleanly scraped, it was pulled tightly over stones, trees - everything that could help avoid contraction, drying of the skin during the drying stage. The dried skin had to be softened, it was beaten off with stones, wooden sticks, stretched by hand. And the finished skin was cut with a pointed stone into separate pieces, which, in turn, were pierced with a special stone (a prototype of a modern awl) and holes were made. Large skins were sewn together with thin strips of leather, a little later a prototype of modern threads appeared - horsehair, durable and more plastic than a thin leather strip.

A little later, a stone needle was invented, they were also made from bones and horns. This made it possible to stitch the skins of animals more accurately, the clothes began to take on a clearer shape - pants, tunics. Also, bags and shoes were sewn from the skins, tied to the leg with leather strips.

It was here, along with the need to protect his body from the cold, that primitive man began to take care of the aesthetics of appearance. There was a desire to decorate clothes. The first decorations were made of pebbles, shells, clay figurines.

When agriculture appeared along with hunting, primitive man noticed that some plants, or rather parts of them, give color when wet. So, for example, the bark of trees, the shells of nuts are red, and the leaves of indigo are blue, the leaves of lavsonia are from yellow to brown. The clothes began to be dyed.

Along with dyeing clothes, people learned to make fabrics from plant fibers (flax, bast), as well as to get yarn from animal hair. These fabrics were also dyed, and some kind of tunics and trousers were sewn from them.

Judging by the rock paintings, both men and women wore jewelry. These were beads made of pebbles, seeds, necklaces made of shells, feathers, bones of fish and animals, horns, teeth and tusks. Bead threads were made from thin strips genuine leather, and later - from plant fibers.

Hairstyles were also given attention. They were braided into a kind of braid and decorated with wooden combs and pins made of bones and pebbles, shells and teeth were also used to decorate hair.

Thus, depending on the conditions of existence in the cold climate of the Ice Age and the availability of improvised means, primitive man became a trendsetter in fur clothes decorated with pebbles, shells and fish bones, as well as fur shoes fastened with leather laces on the leg.

In 1991, paleontologists in the Alps found an ice mummy. These were the remains of a primitive man, who was given the name "Ötzi". Ötzi lived 5300 years ago. Ötzi's clothes are in good condition. Ötzi's clothing had an intricate shape. His body was covered with a cloak woven from straw, as well as a leather vest and belt, there was a bandage and shoes on his hips. A bearskin hat and a leather chin strap were found next to the mummy. Wide waterproof shoes, most likely, were needed for crossing the snowy hills. The sole was created from a bearskin, the upper part was woven from deerskin, and the bast was used as laces. Soft grass was tied around the legs, it served instead of socks. The waistcoat, belt, windings, and loincloth were made from strips of leather that were sewn together with tendons. There was a bag on the belt, in which useful things were kept: a scraper, a drill, flint, bone arrows and dry mushrooms used as tinder.