Two small scraps of elk hide, joined by a cord of twisted fibers and preserved for roughly 12,400 years in an Oregon rock shelter, are the earliest sewn items ever found. Just a few square centimeters, the fragments may also be the world’s oldest pieces of clothing.
They are “definitely sewn, because we have cordage sewn into a hide that comes right out and goes into another piece of hide,” says archaeologist Richard Rosencrance, of the University of Nevada, Reno. Radiocarbon dating places the hides at the end of the last Ice Age, he and colleagues report February 4 in Science Advances. Stone tools and bone needles recovered with