Lice DNA Study Shows Humans First Wore Clothes 170,000 Years Ago

Science Daily ^ | Jan. 7, 2011 | Science Daily staff writer

[Salman]

A new University of Florida study following the evolution of lice shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, a technology which enabled them to successfully migrate out of Africa.

Principal investigator David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, studies lice in modern humans to better understand human evolution and migration patterns. His latest five-year study used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study is available online and appears in this month's print edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing," Reed said. "Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn't exist until clothing came about in humans."

...

[Calvin Locke]

Learn something new...

I thought there was only two types of lice. And heat makes perfect sense.

[SunkenCiv]

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Note: this topic is dated 1/09/2011. Blast from the Past. Thanks Salman. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.