Braving the cold weather in Northern Europe required Neanderthals to have robust bodies and a facility for making fire. But did they wear clothes? Indirect evidence suggests that Neanderthals living in cold regions almost certainly dressed themselves head to toe in leather and furs. However, we’ve never actually found Neanderthal clothing or clothing remnants.
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The genetics of head and body lice shows that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens diverged somewhere between 170,000 and 72,000 years ago and that one kind of body lice was reintroduced to H. sapiens from another ancient human population — possibly Neanderthals — 100,000 years ago. Because body lice live on clothing, this suggests our ancestors began wearing clothing sometime before that.
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Although most researchers agree that Neanderthals wore clothes, what kind of garments they wore is up for debate. In the past, scholars thought Neanderthals wore simple loincloths or loose-fitting capes. But given Neanderthals’ intelligence, [Sarah Lacy, a biological anthropologist at the University of Delaware] thinks they haven’t gotten enough credit.
