History of hide materials

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Humanity has used

Tanning of hides to manufacture leather was invented during the Paleolithic.

Parchment for use in writing was introduced during the Bronze Age and later refined into vellum, before paper became commonplace.^{[citation needed]}

Prehistoric and Ancient use

Ian Gilligan (Australian National University) has argued convincingly that hominids without fur would have needed leather clothing to survive outside the tropics in mid-latitude Eurasia, southern Africa, and the Levant during the cold glacial and stadial periods of the Ice Age, and there is archaeological evidence for the use of hide and leather in the Paleolithic.^[1]

Simple, unmodified stone flakes could have been used to scrape hides for tanning, but scraper tools are more specialized for tasks such as woodworking and

The earliest known bone awls date to between 84,000 and 72,000 years ago in South Africa, and their use-wear shows that they were probably used to pierce soft materials, such as tanned leather.[4] Bone awls were later made in the Aurignacian in Europe, west Asia, and Russia, and also in Tasmania during the Last Glacial Maximum.^{[1]: 50–51, 44–45 [2]: 157–158} The earliest eyed sewing needles date to between 43,000 and 28,500 years ago, probably at least 35,000 years ago, in southern Siberia, and were used across Paleolithic Eurasia and in North America.^[1]: 49

Paleolithic hunters are also known to have targeted fur-bearing animals, such as wolves and arctic foxes in Europe, snow leopards in Central Asia, mole-rats in Africa, and red-necked wallabies in Tasmania.^{[1]: 45–48}

As animal husbandry was introduced during the Neolithic, human communities got a steady source of hides. The oldest confirmed leather tanning tools were found in ancient Sumer and date to approximately 5000 BCE.^[5] The oldest surviving piece of leather footwear is the Areni-1 shoe that was made in Armenia around 3500 BCE. Another, possibly older, piece of leather was found in Guitarrero Cave in northern Peru, dating to the Archaic period.^[2]: 340

The first written references to leather are documented from

Medieval use

During the

Fur farming was introduced in the 19th century, and is today the main source of fur clothing. Synthetic fur is an alternative to genuine fur, for cost and ethical reasons.

Several kinds of

See also

Notes