Lice hang ancient date on first clothes: Genetic analysis puts origin at 190,000 years ago

Science News ^ | May 8th, 2010 | Bruce Bower

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Using DNA to trace the evolutionary split between head and body lice, researchers conclude that body lice first came on the scene approximately 190,000 years ago. And that shift, the scientists propose, followed soon after people first began wearing clothing... sheds light on a poorly understood cultural development that allowed people to settle in northern, cold regions, said Andrew Kitchen of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Armed with little direct evidence, scientists had previously estimated that clothing originated anywhere from around 1 million to 40,000 years ago. An earlier analysis of mitochondrial DNA from the two modern types of lice indicated that body lice evolved from head lice only about 70,000 years ago... Though well suited to gauging the timing of evolutionary events, mitochondrial DNA is a relatively small part of the genome. Kitchen's team examined both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA samples from head and body lice, yielding the much older, and presumably more accurate, estimate of when body lice first evolved... The researchers calculated relatively fast mutation rates for both forms of lice, so the new age estimate for the divergence of body lice from head lice is a conservative one. It’s possible for body lice to have evolved from head lice in only a few generations, according to laboratory studies, Kitchen said. No evidence indicates that head lice can evolve from body lice.

[SunkenCiv]

Really this study should have been of crab lice.

[SunkenCiv]

You wish! ;’)

[colorado tanker]

ROTFLMAO!

[neverdem]

Genetic analysis of human head
and clothing lice indicates an
early origin of clothing use in
archaic hominins.
ANDREW KITCHEN1, MELISSA
A. TOUPS2, JESSICA E. LIGHT3
and DAVID L. REED4. 1Center for
Infectious Disease Dynamics,
Department of Biology, The
Pennsylvania State University
2Department of Biology, Indiana
University 3Department of Wildlife
and Fisheries Science, Texas A&M
University, 4Florida Museum of
Natural History, University of
Florida.
Clothing use is an important modern
behavior that may have played a
role in the expansion of humans into
northern latitudes and cold climates.
Scientists have estimated that
clothing use originated somewhere
between 1.2 MYA and 40 KYA, but
there is little direct archaeological,
fossil, or genetic evidence available
to support these estimates.
Therefore, novel markers, such as
host-specific parasites, are
necessary to complement existing
evidence and provide new insights
into the evolution of clothing use.
Human head and clothing lice,
which are obligate, host specific
human parasites and occupy distinct
ecological niches (i.e. head hair and
clothing), are uniquely qualified to
elucidate this aspect of human
evolution as clothing lice are not
likely to have evolved prior to the
advent of clothing. Here we report
how the genetic analysis of human
lice provides new direct estimates
for the origin of clothing use that
are far earlier than previously
believed. Using a coalescent
modeling approach to investigate a
multilocus louse dataset, we find
that head and clothing lice initially
diverged, and clothing use likely
originated, between 0.22 MYA and
1 MYA. This suggests that the use
of rudimentary clothing originated
not with anatomically modern
humans or even late-surviving
species such as H. neanderthalensis
in the Late Pleistocene, but much
earlier. This genetic analysis of lice
reinforces a broad trend of archaic
hominin developments, including
the evolution of clothing use, during
the Early to Middle Pleistocene.

http://physanth.org/annual-meeting/2010/79th-annual-meeting-2010/2010%20AAPA%20Abstracts.pdf

P. 154 of 336 Sorry about the delay.

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Thanks neverdem!