Scientific research estimates that hu- mans have been wearing clothing of some sort for as long as 500,000 years, but sewing needles didn’t come along until around 40,000 years ago. Our ancestors wore vegetal matter or cut animal skins into some form of garment, which, it’s been suggested, protected them from cold. Personal propriety — covering the body from the view of others — was slower to evolve.
I’ve always wondered about the pro- priety question. I once asked a friend who’d spent quite some time with the Yanomami tribe in Brazil what they did on a daily basis. After all, they went around basically naked. He said when the men came back from hun- ting they all tried to have sex with the girls, the best hunters having the better choice because they had more to offer. They all knew each other, intimately, so clothing wasn’t so much about hiding private parts. Men looped twine around the base of the glans and tied their members around their waists to hold them up. Women didn’t bother with an outfit, possibly for the aforementioned game playing, which my friend referred to as rape. But most tribes are no more than about 60 members, like an extended family, so I took rape to mean frolicking of a type in which a shuffling of choices leads to a daily prize.
Here, though, I want to write something about leather, which isn’t just an animal skin, but a hairless skin that’s been cut up, trimmed, skived, treated, and stitched together as a protection from cold and as a covering of the body. A leather garment or vestment also has a symbolic connotation; it’s more than just a cover-up: a leather garment shows off one’s social position like the feathers of a peacock. So how did we soft-skinned, weather-suffering, hunter-gatherers go from wearing vegetal materials and uncut skins to designing fancy leather garments to show our status in life ?
Men and women like to show off their skills and their status. Archeologists have found unused piles of shale arrowheads from early Paleolithic times — thousands upon thousands of them, which men (I assume they were men) had chipped into killing tools. So many unused arrowheads suggest they banged them out for the fun of it (pos- sibly after they’d chased the girls).
In A History of Warfare, the renowned historian, John Keegan, suggests that the invention of weaponry and the creation of slaughterhouses came along together. This was eons after the invention of arrowheads and the sewing needle, around the time of the domestication of plants and animals (in the Fertile Cresecent, about 13,000 years ago), at the very source of civilization, when humans began to develop technologies for consumption and slaughter.
Leather comes from livestock, but skins also come from pigs, chickens, and even al- ligators. Leather is soft to touch but stronger than any textile; so the craftsmanship brings together elegance and resilience. Preparing skins required the same types of tools that were used in war. But does that suggest that men worked with leather while women worked with textiles? Leatherworking began in cottage industries, for making straps, shoes, bags, purses, furniture, and saddles, right on up to book covers. These industries grew with empire building. Cordovan, also Cordwain or Spanish leather, came from North Africa, in the ninth century, where it got its name.
Leather also has a sexy side — it’s skin after all. It comes in different colors and textures and, in recent times, has become a fetish material for dominatrices, bikers, rock groups — punk, Goth, heavy metal — and gay bars. In sci-fi movies like Blade Runner, where smarmy businessmen use slave labor in their massive industries, leather seems to have a place. But leather isn’t used in contemporary warfare, the space industry, or in New Age industries. Vegans, the radical wing of the New Age, avoid wearing leather and skins of any type. And sportswear manu- facturers use synthetic materials and make clothes that one might imagine in space travel — but not leather.
The only leather goods I own are shoes (4 pairs), belts (2), my wallet, and a toilet kit. I never felt macho enough to buy leather pants — even when I was in a macho rock band years ago, though I did have a leather jacket. And I never liked hunting or even fishing, though my son likes to fish and I’mthe one who has to rip out the bloody hook and gut the poor creature.
We’ve traveled far in terms of our empathy for creatures, especially those we’ve domesticated. Imagine a paradisiacal future where livestock are like pets, groomed like rich peoples’ horses. Will leather and slaughterhouses fade one after the other? Will leather lose its appeal? Maybe science will develop a sexy synthetic replacement using nanotechnology — and not cheesy like Lycra or lamé? Will leather go the way of the horse? Could it be in decline? Will synthetic materials replace organic ones? I wonder. What do you think ?
