Oregon: Home to The Oldest Evidence of Stitched Clothing
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It got pretty chilly when glaciers spread across the northern world during the last Ice Age, and ancient humans had to adapt to survive.
Happily, our species was imaginative enough to figure out new ways to keep warm. We got there by improving the ways we clothed ourselves using new tools, such as bone needles, traps, snares, and wooden artifacts - and these creations mark a crucial point in human evolution, as they helped our ancestors endure diverse conditions across different latitudes.
In the 1950s, archaeologists found a small treasure trove of such artifacts in Cougar Mountain Cave in Oregon. The pieces recovered include 24 fiber items, 12 wooden implements, and three animal hides. For decades, these treasures went unexamined - until recently, when a team led by Richie Rosencrance revisited them, using modern techniques to analyze and date the pieces.
“We found a fairly limited number of items that date to the late Pleistocene,” Rosencrance told New Atlas. But among those items, “we found tremendous technological diversity, as well as raw material use that attests to a really complex and detailed knowledge system.”
Among the three animal hides, artifact CMC21-1 is a remarkable example: a small fragment of processed elk hide, which now stands as the earliest known evidence of stitched clothing. It dates to around 12,600 years ago, and is composed of multiple parts of cut hide that are sewn together, featuring a Z-twist of the cord. To prevent the cord from pulling out, the thread was secured with a knot. The piece offers a rare glimpse into how ancient peoples used sophisticated technologies to survive in the extreme cold.
