May 2000

Dress, like everything else, has a history--a prehistory, even. Well before humans developed language or agriculture, they learned to dress, for protection and for identity. To understand this history, a brief recap of the last million years or so (!) will help put this essay into context:

• About one million years ago, some of the earliest hominids (what humans were called before they were fully human, basically hairy, two-footed Homo erectuses) began migrating from Africa into Europe, Arabia and Asia. Not all of us migrated; some of us stayed in Africa and continued to evolve there.

• Several hundred thousand years later, some of these hominids evolved into Neanderthals and Heidelbergers, two of the earliest forms of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens heidelbergensis). Neanderthal remains have been discovered in Iraq, parts of Russia, and many parts of western and eastern Europe. Heidelberger remains have been discovered in many parts of Africa, Europe, China and India. As the weather warranted, these early humans constructed garments made of fur skins to keep them warm. The first deliberate human burials also occurred around this time. Red ochre, a form of iron oxide, has been found at many of these early burial sites. Its use may have included bodily adornment.
  
  
• About 100,000 years ago, the earliest humans (Neanderthals and Heidelbergers) slowly became extinct, and were eventually replaced by a new species: modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens). Modern humans expanded into Australia and China (about 60,000 years ago), Europe (about 40,000 years ago), northern Asia (35,000 years ago) and North America (about 15,000 years ago). 60,000 year-old Neanderthal grave sites in Iraq (Shanidar Cave) include flowers and a 28,000 year-old site in Russia (Sunghir) included thousands of ivory beads, each of which would have taken at least one hour to make.

Key to understanding the history of adornment is the evidence of deliberate human burial. Although our early ancestors weren't the most mentally complex people, around 200,000 years ago, you could say we "got religion."

Above: Venus figurine, Upper Paleolithic, Western Europe (1).

R.I.P.

Instead of just chucking our dead relatives and friends in human garbage dumps, we actually started burying them. And the fact that we began burying them in graves with flowers, beads, red ochre and other "gifts" indicates that we did this not because we were concerned with sanitation and hygiene (that would come much later), but rather because we began to conceive of an afterlife.

The notion of an afterlife, and the concept that spirits (both good and evil) governed our existence, really began to play out around 40,000 years ago. To encourage the good ones and to keep the evil ones away, we began to adorn ourselves, and our dead, with jewelry, cosmetics and perfume. As John Flügel explains, these portable amulets were a lot more convenient than lugging around a stone Venus figurine, a 10 lb. wooden cross, a dead bird, or other sacred, but cumbersome, object:

Above: The Venus of Laussel, from southern France, c. 20,000 to 25,000 B.C. (2)

"The only protection that is possible against...maleficient influences is the use of counter-magic, and...it is extremely convenient to carry about some amulet which can be trusted to ward off the evil influences without the necessity of active intervention. For this purpose various objects, supposed to possess magical properties, were hung or otherwise attached to the body, and some authoritie[s] are inclined to believe that this magical purpose of articles carried on the person preceded even the ornamental purpose, and therefore constituted the real motive for the first beginnings of clothing. Such a view is of course in harmony with the opinion now coming to be widely held among anthropologists, that in general the earliest forms of art served utilitarian (i.e., magical) rather than purely aesthetic ends."

And so began the traditions of body piercing and adornment. By putting little amulets in our earlobes, lips, noses, and around our necks and arms, we protected ourselves from evil while hunting for food and making love. Covering our bodies in red ochre paint (perhaps the earliest cosmetic) served the same function. Its red color symbolized the blood of life; it encouraged fertility and everlasting life.

In fact, Pierre Gravel and others even believe that the practice of highlighting the eye with eyeliner and eye make-up (a practice common throughout the world) originated as a protective ritual against the ancient, omnipotent force known as the Evil Eye:

"It may be significant that women, who are traditionally among those who have to be 'protected' against the Evil Eye, are the ones who generally wear cosmetics. It may also be that there was originally an affiliation between the two meanings of the Greek word 'cosmos'...which means both 'Universe' and 'ornament.'"

Although eye make-up, like most jewelry and cosmetics, is largely worn for aesthetic reasons today, some women, especially in Varanasi, India, still rim their eyes and the eyes of their children with lampblack as protection.

Above: Minoan faience statuette with snakes, from the palace of Knossos, Crete. c. 1600 to 1500 B.C. (3).

If you've read any of Jolique's articles, you'll know that perfume may also have sprung from similarly spiritual beginnings. The word itself offers some clues—"perfume" derives from the Latin phrase, per fumare, meaning "through smoke." Perfume's prototype, incense, was developed more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. For Mesopotamians, the most coveted incense (a fragrant gum resin secreted by many trees) came from the cedar of Lebanon tree. In fact, "Lebanon" gets its name from the Akkadian word, lubbunu, which means incense. Used in temples, incense was believed to attract good spirits, while keeping the foul, evil spirits at bay. Incense is still used in Catholic churches today for the same purpose.

Ancient Egyptians prepared their dead with it. "Embalming, mummifying and censing the corpse were means of preventing th[e] offensive process of decay and replacing the foul odour of death with the sweet scent of immortality," says author Constance Classen. For Egyptians incense offered the dead a mode of transcendence from earth to the heavens, where the gods were believed to "sweat incense."

Today, perfume may serve a similar purpose, not so much for transcendence, but rather to ward off the unwanted advances of more earthly subjects. Piet Vroon explains:

"We do not want to be treated in too personal a way in public; after all, nothing is as personal as your body odor. In order to 'keep your distance,' the obvious thing to do is to replace your body odor with an 'anonymous' lotion, aftershave or perfume. [...] According to various researchers, then, perfumes [...] have a certain protective role[.] [I]t is conceivable that long ago women had a biological interest in keeping [the scent of] their ovulation hidden. According to the theory of evolution, the process of natural selection would have encouraged the body's production of masking substances, and if those masking substances are not yet present, a woman might look in her environment for substances to mask a body odor which indicates that she is fertile."

The rest, you could say, is history. Although adornment today serves many functions, a quick gander around your office or university will reveal that its original purpose still thrives today in some form. As you look around, you might see an old man wearing a gold cross or a Star of David, a woman wearing an Irish ring called a Claddagh, or a young woman with a nose stud in the form of the ancient Yin/Yang symbol. You might even get a whiff of someone's perfume. Open your eyes and expand your nostrils and you'll begin to realize that adornment's first function had little, if anything, to do with attraction. Its original purpose was much more simple: protection.

~~~

Selected Bibliography:

-Classen, Constance, David Howes and Anthony Synnott. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. New York: Routledge, 1994.
-Cunliffe, Barry, ed. The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
-Flügel, J.C. The Psychology of Clothes. International Universities Press, Inc., no date.
-Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1989.
-Gravel, Pierre Bettez. The Malevolent Eye: An Essay on the Evil Eye, Fertility and the Concept of Mana. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995.
-Stringer, Christopher and Robin McKie. African Exodus and the Origins of Modern Humanity. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1996.
-Vroon, Piet, Anton van Amerongen and Hans de Vries. Smell: The Secret Seducer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

Photo Credits:

(1), (2) and (3):

-Holländer, Eugen. Äskulap und Venus: Eine Kultur und Sittengeschichte im Spiegel des Arztes. Berlin: Im Propyläen - Verlag, 1927. pages 158, 160 and 361, respectively.