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greenappletree t1_j9uzx3b wrote

TIL there is a difference in lice, yikes. But wow that is a loooong time

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jxj24 t1_j9v0psn wrote

The Lice Age.

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daisy0723 t1_j9v0rwn wrote

They can also determine when we lost our body hair by studying the differences between head lice, body lice and genital lice. I watched a documentary about it years ago.

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9v4yuk wrote

"between 83k and 170k years ago" isn't very specific.

Also, this seems like a question that can be better answered by historians than by scientists.

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Niosus t1_j9v7v9m wrote

The data is what it is. If the data only supports a fairly wide range of ages, they can only report it as is. Future research is likely to narrow things down further.

And honestly, I think it's quite a reasonable range. That age range means that we only started wearing clothes after we became modern humans. There are many hundreds of thousands up to a few million years of hominids that came before that. It's not super precise, but it's pretty impressive that they managed to figure it out at all. If you read the abstract, you'll see that previous research only managed to narrow things down to between 40k and 3 million years ago. The new research is about 30x more precise. That puts the significance of this into context, doesn't it?

Finally, if you think science is not important or useful for historians, I'd urge you to look into the methods they use to figure things out. Radiometric dating, genetic sequencing to determine ancestry, anatomy, geology, climate science, plate tectonics, and so many more fields... It all comes together to interpret the tiny nuggets of evidence that still exists, into a bigger picture of what likely happened. Every field provides a fresh perspective on the evidence that can corroborate or refute hypotheses. Without the scientists, we would get so much less information from the artifacts we find.

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cwood1973 OP t1_j9ve700 wrote

Yeah, and they discovered that pubic lice in humans did not descend from human head lice. They descended from gorilla lice... which raises a whole different set of questions.

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TerribleIdea27 t1_j9vr2my wrote

The reason for this wide range is the fact that you can't see in DNA how old it is, you need to combine all different kinds of data and make educated guesses. You can't just say there's x mutations so there's y times x years divergence between these two lines

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humanefly t1_j9vxx7o wrote

I dunno really. I don't want to know. I think it was probably in a slum somewhere that orangatangs are found in the wild. There was probably no waiver, you just pay your cash and you takes your ugh chances

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OsamaBinFuckin t1_j9w5n68 wrote

Sounds dumb, I think its much more logical that it started with one cover and then another to protect skin and valuable parts.

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NickeKass t1_j9wb9g3 wrote

My sad understanding from watching the documentary was that she was trained to just get in position and take it if a male approached her :(. That probably means she was beaten a lot to get to that point or taken at a young age.

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soumyeah2 t1_j9wby2d wrote

This headline is a bit confusing, is there a better way to make clear that the "because" is linked to scientists believing rather than people wearing clothes?

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InkOrganizer t1_j9wesjn wrote

Which side do clothing made of hide and fur belong to I wonder.

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Evernight2021 t1_j9wkdgy wrote

It's wild to me that they've found lice that old intact to study

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Due_Platypus_3913 t1_j9wlxx8 wrote

So our ancestors survived the first ice age(or two?) with NO CLOTHES?!?Yikes!Now that’s tough!

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dariamorgandorfferr t1_j9wn4s1 wrote

I think about this a lot especially with bed bugs. They're an interesting example in ecology because the species of bed bugs we know of .. only parasitizes humans. Unlike mosquitoes, they play 0 role in natural ecosystems, they're fully obligate humanivores. We could fully eradicate bed bugs with no negative consequences to mother nature. Science get on this lol

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ZhouDa t1_j9wp40v wrote

If we were still in Africa at that time it wouldn't have been that difficult, especially if we had more hair/fur than we do now. I think only South Africa had glaciated during the last ice age.

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Elite_Jackalope t1_j9wqiqj wrote

TIL scientists believe people started wearing clothes between 83k and 170k years ago, because that's which is when clothing lice diverged from head lice.

I’m no copy editor, but I do think this reads a little easier.

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dariamorgandorfferr t1_j9wtmtq wrote

The lice that attack humans, only attack humans, but there are other species that infect other animals. With bed bugs that's not as much of a thing. (Iirc) I'm not a lice expert though entomology wouldn't fit into my class schedule :(

I'm not a parasitologist though lol ianal (Ignore the fact I brought up bed bugs I'm sorry I thought you replied to my other comment for a second)

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Monkzeng t1_j9wuckv wrote

Humanities greatest mistake

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9wv0pe wrote

Prior to modern humans was Homo erectus. If by people the scientists were including Homo erectus then they are just flat-out wrong because there has been evidence of them wearing clothing much earlier than 170k years ago.

""Peking Man," a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a wood-working, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.

And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides."

https://www.livescience.com/25887-peking-man-hominid-fashion.html

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BrashPop t1_j9wvzsz wrote

Now I’m mad thinking about everybody shaving their heads and bodies except like a hundred assholes who just refuse because “It won’t even help, look, I got lice on PURPOSE just to prove how stupid everyone else is!”

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culturedgoat t1_j9wwd10 wrote

And yet they know nothing of why I stopped wearing clothes around 3 years ago…

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Teknicsrx7 t1_j9x2m7j wrote

I find myself randomly wondering what was the first type of clothing ever made. Was it shoes, hat, pants (leg covering) or shirt (top covering)? I lean towards shoes, but a hat would be so easy so it could be that, but then covering your sensitive areas is obviously key, I wish we know the answer one day somehow.

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LipTrev t1_j9x39yl wrote

Humans have as much hair as any other great ape.

>humans are not really hairless at all. Per square centimetre, human skin has as many hair follicles as that of other great apes. The difference is not in the number, but in the fineness of the hair that grows from those follicles.

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RiotandRuin t1_j9xcqi1 wrote

Every time I start to have faith in humanity again I hear a story like this. I'm glad she's recovering. I hope the men that put her through that get castrated and fed to the lions.

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ItsPhayded420 t1_j9xd2jv wrote

Did/does lice not exist for animals ? Genuine question, I've never thought to ask. I know fleas etc. My point being we would have been wearing animal skin/fur and it seems natural for the lice to migrate to us.

Also, fuck bedbugs dude I'd rather have mosquitos, had one experience and I'm still traumatized I will sleep outside fuck those things

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vaguelyambiguous1 t1_j9xdc9u wrote

Took me 170k years to realise that clothing and head lice were different.

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Silvery-Lithium t1_j9xgd12 wrote

I hate dealing with head lice with a burning passion. I hate body hair as well.

I would not be shaving my head if there were some collective "let's make lice go extinct" thing. Would be more than willing to comb my hair nightly with a lice comb- the only way I successfully dealt with head lice repeatedly as a teen.

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bodhiseppuku t1_j9xib9b wrote

Head lice... Crotch lice... Clothing lice?

Good time to be a louse .

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Edge_of_the_Wall t1_j9xpv6c wrote

As u/terribleidea27 mentioned, the reason for this wide range is the fact that you can’t see in DNA how old it is, you need to combine all different kinds of data and make educated guesses. You can’t just say there’s x mutations so there’s y times x years divergence between these two lines.

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p-d-ball t1_j9xqvt0 wrote

Yeah, DDT was widely used to kill insects. It successfully got rid of malaria in the continental USA to Canada (malaria used to be all the way up to southern Canada), combined with draining swamps, pavement and sewer systems (to drain water away). Mosquitoes returned, but not with malaria, which requires a minimum population to spread.

DDT was also used to stop bedbugs. They are making a comeback partly because it was stopped, but probably also because of growing social inequality - extremely poor people just don't have the means to kill them where they live. And some people are immune to the itchiness and so aren't motivated enough to kill the bedbugs feeding off them.

DDT, it turns out, weakens bird's eggs. So, raptors were dying out all over the place.

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p-d-ball t1_j9xupj9 wrote

For sure! Want to hear the crazy part? We used to use a product made from chrysanthemum, which is a flower, to kill insects. Massive industry, made in Japan. That industry collapsed with WWII and never recovered, partly because DDT was so cheap.

That kind of sucks, as the flower was obviously natural.

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slightly2spooked t1_j9y115v wrote

IIRC the oldest piece of clothing that we’ve found is a sock. Don’t quote me though.

Edit: I was wrong! The sock is 1,700 years old, the oldest item ever found is a linen dress made 5,000 years ago.

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goinmobile2030 t1_j9yceh9 wrote

Also, the approximate dare of birth for Tommy Hilfiger.

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Zedo1989 t1_j9zgwzx wrote

The first person on earth was conscious, intelligent and educated, and the first person to wear clothes.

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R4G t1_j9zr7vh wrote

Do you happen to be reading The Social Leap by Bill von Hippel?

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