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

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

[Salman]

I love it.

Figuring out when people started to wear clothes by studying lice.

[unspun]

Thank you. It has been a long time. I hope they laundered them.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

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."

And you thought your tax money was going to waste! Without government grants no one would have funded such a profound, though useless, study. And look at the brilliant conclusion - there were no clothing lice until there was clothing! I hope they don't stop the study there. We may discover there were no bed bugs until there were beds but that is pure speculation.

I wonder what the AGW people think about this?

[Calvin Locke]

A couple of years ago, I heard a piece that also said head lice are
different from body lice, but body lice are similar to gorilla
lice, and gorilla lice can survive for about 24 hours without a
host, and a humanoid must have partaken of a gorilla nest vacated
by a gorilla within the previous 24 hours, becoming a new host,
er, environment, for the species to adapt to...

[Sooth2222]

Aren't they telling us what we already know?

[Flag_This]

In Before the Helen Thomas Photo (IBtHTP)!

[Right Wing Assault]

which enabled them to successfully migrate out of Africa

And their descendants are migrating out of Mexico in record numbers today.

[NavyCanDo]

Raquel Welch in a fur bikini is all the evidence I need.

[onedoug]

Tax funding and the generalized liberal attitude of scientists aside, based on my understanding of The Bible and of anthropology and fossil based migratory evidence, I would say that this is very interesting and probably generally correct.

[The Comedian]

That-suit-is-so-169,980's-BC-dude ping.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“”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.” “

It is this “wet streets cause rain” kind of logic that
sets apart scientists these days...

All other possibilities are set aside in favor of a
foregone conclusion he sets out to prove. I find it amazing
that these are the same kinds of people who make fun
of the intelligent design people for having a preformed
idea...

ampu

[Joyell]

Please tell me that a tax funded grant didn’t make this study possible.

A more useful study would be to find a way to make lice extinct.

[decimon]

I know you were just itching to make that ping.

[The Comedian]

I know you were just itching to make that ping.

Quit bugging me. You're just being nit-picky.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[cajuncow]

Prehistoric man clothing identification chart. (Good thing aphids did not evolve into blood suckers.)

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[tet68]

I remember when I was in High School, my sister often
complained that the clothes my mother bought her were
“A hundred and seventy thousand years OLD!!!”

Oddly enough her daughter now says the same thing!

[goat granny]

There are 3 types of lice humans have. Head, body and pubic. Each is specific to the temperature of that part of the body...

When we sheared our goats I ask the pro doing the shearing if he had problems with the lice all goats have. He said nope, they drop off because of body temp of sheep and goats is higher than the human body temp. He could always tell if we missed a goat during delousing (done 4 times a year). And wasn't sweet when he told us we missed one..

If you missed one goat, they would be lousy with lice..:O)

The term "crabs" usually refer to pubic lice. Once in a while we would get one in the hospital and the doctor would usually put a warning on the front of the chart, so we wouldn't catch them in the process of our care for the patient in the hospital..

[Mamzelle]

re: And you thought your tax money was going to waste! Without government grants no one would have funded such a profound, though useless, study. And look at the brilliant conclusion - there were no clothing lice until there was clothing! I hope they don't stop the study there. We may discover there were no bed bugs until there were beds but that is pure speculation.)))

LOL...thanks for that chuckle...an obvious error in logic, but these are scientists we're talking about.

We may find that there were no scientists until there were grants, and the entymologists can study "grant grubbers"...

[Mind-numbed Robot]

There you go, offering suggestions. I wonder how much the grant grubber study will cost us and how many followup studies will be required? After all, there is the grant grubber grabber to be considered.

:-)