What Did Lucy, the Ancestor of Humans, Wear Over Three Million Years Ago?

Recent research indicates that Lucy and her contemporaries, considered ancestors of humans, had less body hair contrary to popular belief and lived naked for a long period until modern clothing was invented. In 1974, a team of paleontologists led by Donald Johanson from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History discovered pieces of an ancient woman's skeleton in Ethiopia. These bone fragments constituted about 40% of the body of this woman, who lived approximately 3.2 million years ago. This ancient being technically does not belong to the family of modern humans but to an extinct family called Australopithecus afarensis. However, this species represents an important evolutionary step between modern humans and their ancestors. As far as we know, this species is the first example of hominins that experienced life on the surface of the earth; beings that paved the way for the emergence of modern humans by descending from trees and standing on two legs. Although this family of creatures could live both in trees and on land, their presence on the ground and exploration of the surrounding world facilitated the evolution of hominins. This skeleton was soon named 'Lucy' and is referred to as the maternal ancestor of humans. There was still a long way to go before evolutionary processes would lead to the emergence of a new species of upright beings known today as Homo sapiens or modern humans. The first signs of our presence date back to around 300,000 years ago, nearly three million years after Lucy's first steps on the plains of Africa. However, Lucy and her kind seem to be a species that managed to undergo the significant stage of walking on the ground and standing on two legs. They were also more capable than their other cousins. Lucy and her kind not only had a greater ability to understand their environment but, based on existing findings, they also seemed to have the ability to use stone tools for food procurement; an important event that increased food intake and allowed for future brain and body growth, ultimately leading to the presence of their distant descendants on earth, namely humans. What did Lucy look like? After examining Lucy's skeleton, researchers named her the mother of us all. The name Lucy was chosen from a Beatles song titled 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' Lucy provided important evidence about human evolution to scientists and managed to attract public attention worldwide. From the early days, efforts to reconstruct her face began. This facial reconstruction attempted to recreate her body using the discovered bones; a method that, while accurately simulating the structure of the skull and body, could not definitively speak about her external features. For this reason, in many of these designs, she was depicted more like our tree-dwelling cousins, namely chimpanzees, with a body and face full of hair. Now, new studies made possible by a wealth of additional data and the development of various technologies indicate that this image is far from reality. Based on recent findings, it seems our ancestors lost their thick body hair around 3 to 4 million years ago, and their bodies resembled modern humans more than chimpanzees. But what impact does such a finding have on our understanding of modern humans and their evolution? According to paleontological findings, the first signs that Homo sapiens chose and invented some form of initial clothing date back to about 170,000 to 83,000 years ago. Considering that their ancestors lived naked with bodies similar to modern ones for three million years prior, an intriguing topic for cultural researchers arises: the story of clothing invention and the transition from the multi-million-year tradition of human ancestors to the present process. The loss of body hair is attributed to various factors, including changes in body physiology to maintain body temperature, attracting suitable mates, and efforts to rid themselves of insect-related diseases and parasites. The common view regarding the invention of clothing is that, given these changes, humans invented clothing for better protection against environmental temperatures. However, it seems that the multi-million-year life of naked human ancestors does not quite align with this notion. Some researchers of ancient societies and cultures have suggested that around 200,000 years ago, widespread migration and changing living conditions made human survival a significant issue. Considering the fact that human infants, unlike many creatures, cannot care for themselves for many years and require constant support and protection, one of the strategies that humans experimentally developed to help protect infants was forming relationships between parents in the context of monogamy or polygamy, which constituted a concept called family. In this case, partners or members in the relationship could protect the children. However, one of the factors that led to initial sexual attraction and the establishment of this relationship was also a challenge for this newly established foundation; as this attraction could draw competitors toward family members and remove one of the members from this newly established foundation. Thus, a type of clothing was invented to reduce attractiveness among people of this era. Therefore, based on this view, the invention of clothing was more an effort to help preserve the lineage by the newly established structure of couples than a response to natural conditions. An important point to consider about such research is the fact that, unlike cases such as morphology or the evolutionary history of species, where research can be conducted with first-hand evidence, in matters of cultural evolution, one cannot speak with such certainty. Discovering the thoughts of our ancestors may be harder than predicting a distant future. No one knows what Lucy thought when she stepped from her safe haven high in the trees onto the ground and stood on her two feet; but certainly, in her farthest imaginations, she could not have envisioned our present.