The secret of the prehistoric clothing that helped the first settlers in North America survive

12,900 years ago, in the north of what is now the United States, a mammoth was killed by a group of humans who had already begun to colonize America at the end of the Paleolithic period. The vestiges of the beastly scene were etched in stone at the archaeological site of La Prele—discovered in 1986 in the state of Wyoming—as well as the settlement of those who killed the animal. At that place, the Paleoindian hunter-gatherers of those high latitudes not only dedicated themselves to capturing animals to eat their meat. They also used their pelts to make clothes, tailored to their bodies, which helped them tolerate the frigid climate of that period. A group of researchers from the University of Wyoming has managed to date the bone needles they used to sew those clothes and have identified the type of animal from which those tools came.

“Humans hunted animals not only for food and subsistence. They also caught them for other purposes,” explains archaeologist Spencer Pelton, lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The researchers examined 32 bone fragments, comparing peptides (i.e. short chains of amino acids) from these tools with those of animals that existed during that period. “Archaeologists have not identified the materials used to produce them and that limits the understanding of this cultural invention,” he adds.

The ancient inhabitants of the La Prele site, according to scientists, used the bones of red foxes, mountain lions, lynxes and even hares to make these small tools, which were often sharpened with stones to form a point. Although the authors clarify that no remains of the garments have been preserved, there is indirect evidence of their existence due to the shape of these animal bone needles.

Ian Gilligan, a researcher at the University of Sydney (Australia), says it is difficult to imagine that the tools were used for other purposes. “They are very fine needles, 1.5 millimetres thick. It is difficult to imagine that they were used for other purposes, such as in the construction of covers for tents,” says the author of the book Climate, clothing and agriculture in prehistory, who was not part of the study.

Unlike draped garments — a single piece of fabric wrapped around the body — tailored clothing clings better to the skin, and the seams provide a waterproof and windproof barrier. Luc Doyon, an expert in bone archaeology at the University of Bordeaux, believes the paper accurately describes the origin of the bones using CT scans. “Often when we study tools made of bone, antler or ivory, the process erases the characteristics that would allow us to establish the species and the element from which they came,” says this expert, who was not involved in the analysis.

Other research had already described how eyed sewing needles facilitated the expansion of early Sapiens into southern Siberia 40,000 years ago. Archaeologists, according to Doyon, believed that bone needles were an indicator of the appearance of clothing. However, a recent review proves that this is potentially not the case. A 2018 publication provides evidence of human occupation in mid- and high latitudes before the appearance of garments. In 2022, the expert participated in an analysis of how Homo sapiens sewed their clothes on the Catalan coast, which demonstrates a piercing and suturing technology that would have been as efficient as needles and which predates their first appearance in the archaeological record.

The research suggests that clothing enabled modern human dispersal to northern latitudes, which eventually enabled population growth and the subsequent colonization of the American continent. The items were recovered from archaeological excavations conducted by researchers from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming between 2015 and 2022. “We don’t have, for example, the skulls, vertebrae, or ribs of cats or dogs, or hairs on site, there are only the needles,” stresses Pelton, the author of the research.

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