What about the migration of Homo Erectus some 500,000+ years ago? Peking and the South Urals must have been chilly?
[ The study also shows humans started wearing clothes well after they lost body hair, which genetic skin-coloration research pinpoints at about 1 million years ago, meaning humans spent a considerable amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed said. ]
More support of the Aquatic Human Origin Hypothesis.
How do we know that the lice were not on hairy Neanderthal. Now that we know that modern humans have from 1 to 4% Neanderthal DNA, might they not also have gotten Neanderthal body lice. I always thought my husband had some Neanderthal blood. Red hair, pink skin, heavy bones, short legs, slight brow ridges, weak chin,extremely hard almost crystaline teeth, volatile temper. He was also very hairy on the chest and back and even one shoulder.
He came back from an assignment out of town where he stayed at a YMCA for more than a month. When he came home he brought body lice. I asked him if he had been doing something naughty. He swore he had been a good boy. There were no lice “down there”, but they were all over his chest and belly, and even one in his eyebrows, so I believed him. ;-)