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Using animal genetics to study other phenomena is one of my favorite techniques! We’ve got a lower bar for when humans started wearing clothing, for example, b

• ahazred8ta 3y ago
  About 40k years ago we start to see people's toes scrunched up from wearing moccasins.
• echelon 3y ago
  That's so interesting! Do you have other examples?
  • ace2358 3y ago
    And a reference would be great!
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Reference and abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002236/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002236/ Clothing use is an important modern behavior that contributed to the successful expansion of humans into higher latitudes and cold climates. Previous research suggests that clothing use originated anywhere between 40,000 and 3 Ma, though there is little direct archaeological, fossil, or genetic evidence to support more specific estimates. Since clothing lice evolved from head louse ancestors once humans adopted clothing, dating the emergence of clothing lice may provide more specific estimates of the origin of clothing use. Here, we use a Bayesian coalescent modeling approach to estimate that clothing lice diverged from head louse ancestors at least by 83,000 and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago. Our analysis suggests that the use of clothing likely originated with anatomically modern humans in Africa and reinforces a broad trend of modern human developments in Africa during the Middle to Late Pleistocene.