NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9v4yuk wrote
"between 83k and 170k years ago" isn't very specific.
Also, this seems like a question that can be better answered by historians than by scientists.
dmart444 t1_j9v5thl wrote
what do you think "prehistoric" means?
NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9v61n0 wrote
Good point. It would be better to ask a prehistorian. Or maybe even an archeologist.
idiotcosmonaut t1_j9vw0b1 wrote
when's the last time you came across a 100K-year-old pair of pants?
NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9vw7d9 wrote
I'd imagine there would be fossilized evidence somewhere in the world.
BoxingSoup t1_j9w5o4q wrote
You want us to find... Fossilized pants?
NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9w5xs8 wrote
Yes. I'd assume 'pants' back then were made of animal skin and there have been numerous animal skin fossils found around the world.
idiotcosmonaut t1_j9w21os wrote
if there is, we haven't found it yet, because very specific conditions have to be met for clothing to survive millennia of decay and many of them are dependent on chance
Niosus t1_j9v7v9m wrote
The data is what it is. If the data only supports a fairly wide range of ages, they can only report it as is. Future research is likely to narrow things down further.
And honestly, I think it's quite a reasonable range. That age range means that we only started wearing clothes after we became modern humans. There are many hundreds of thousands up to a few million years of hominids that came before that. It's not super precise, but it's pretty impressive that they managed to figure it out at all. If you read the abstract, you'll see that previous research only managed to narrow things down to between 40k and 3 million years ago. The new research is about 30x more precise. That puts the significance of this into context, doesn't it?
Finally, if you think science is not important or useful for historians, I'd urge you to look into the methods they use to figure things out. Radiometric dating, genetic sequencing to determine ancestry, anatomy, geology, climate science, plate tectonics, and so many more fields... It all comes together to interpret the tiny nuggets of evidence that still exists, into a bigger picture of what likely happened. Every field provides a fresh perspective on the evidence that can corroborate or refute hypotheses. Without the scientists, we would get so much less information from the artifacts we find.
FlacidHangDown t1_j9wdpmc wrote
Over millions of years of time an estimate of 83k-170k years is pretty specific
NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9we2uy wrote
"Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years"
https://www.yourgenome.org/stories/evolution-of-modern-humans/
True, if it was out of millions of years it would be decently precise, but it seems it was out of 200k.
Minkelz t1_j9wua0c wrote
Why do you think clothes would be limited to modern humans?
NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9wv0pe wrote
Prior to modern humans was Homo erectus. If by people the scientists were including Homo erectus then they are just flat-out wrong because there has been evidence of them wearing clothing much earlier than 170k years ago.
""Peking Man," a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a wood-working, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.
And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides."
https://www.livescience.com/25887-peking-man-hominid-fashion.html
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