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History of nudity


The history of nudity involves social attitudes to nudity in different cultures in history.

The wearing of clothing at various occasions is common in most human societies. It is not known when humans began wearing clothes. Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates; alternatively, covering may have been invented first for other purposes, such as magic, decoration, cult, or prestige, and later found to be practical as well.

However, many cultures have at times dispensed with clothing, at least for some purposes and in some situations, or even at all times.

Because animal skins and vegetable materials decompose readily there is no archeological evidence of when and how clothing developed. However, recent studies of human lice suggest that clothing may have become commonplace in human society around 72,000 years ago. If that is correct, it would mean that for around 128,000 years and the majority of anatomically modern human history, humans may not have worn clothes. Some anthropologists believe that Homo habilis and even Homo erectus may have used animal skins for protection placing the origins of clothing at perhaps a million years or more.

Fashions in ancient Egypt did not change much over the millennia. The ancient Egyptians wore the minimum of clothing. Men were commonly bare chested and barefoot. They wore a tunic around their waist. Women commonly wore a loose draped or see-through fabric. Women entertainers performed naked. Children went without clothing until puberty, at about age 12.

Though the minimum amount of clothing was the norm in ancient Egypt, the custom was viewed as humiliating by some other ancient cultures. For example, the Hebrew Bible records: "So shall the king of the Assyrians lead away the prisoners of Egypt, and the captivity of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt". Similar images occur on many bas-reliefs, also from other empires.

In some ancient Mediterranean cultures, even well past the hunter-gatherer stage, such as Minoan, athletic and/or cultist nudity of men and boys – and rarely, of women and girls – was a natural concept.


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