the evolution of clothes?

I was going to say that penis sheaths were hardly a way to minimize the visual impact of genitalia.
We also need to draw a distinction between scraped hides and cured hides, as it is only the invention of a curing process that allows a hide to be used as anything but temporary, and smelly, covering.I would think the first use was for camoflage, as you have mentioned, and where curing would not be necessary. The ability of humans to walk up to or run down prey is limited (walking down is another matter, and very time consuming). This would have evolved from using grass and bushes to using skins of other dead animals where the plains became too open to use vegetation. We also see evidence of this use in late examples of "primitive" cultures.Curing could have developed as a way to wear "trophies" longer before it became useful in the production of clothes.And as far as stones go, I thought that Leakey had demonstrated that stones used by Australopithicus were capable of cutting and cleaning hides. University of Missouri–St. Louis BUT another question that has not been asked is: why have humans {lost\reduced} their fur? The "it's cold" answer begs this question, as all our ape relatives have healty coats that would provide warmth, especially those living high in the mountains.The logical conclusion is that humans lost fur when they were able to supplant it's purpose with a more adaptive covering that provided better regulation of heat and cooling.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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exactly. there is also an argument that increased brain size allows for greater cooling, and that helped the human brain to grow in size.

I think we have to consider their co-evolution, increase use of skins less use for fur, less fur, more need for skins.I am also personally fairly certain that sexual selection had a lot to do with it's co-evolution.First off, one of the visible differences between man an most other apes is the estrus cycle: in most other apes this period is marked by loss of hair\fur in sexual signaling areas (breasts) and swelling of certain parts. Thus loss of hair\fur in females more than in males.This would also lead to covering\uncovering certain areas for {political\personal} reasons.We have also discussed trophyism in the wearing of skins and such adornments: this too can be related to sexual selection. One young man has a nice plush lion skin from a beast killed in combat (the zulu test of manhood), another has a patchy hide of a zebra that he took off a dead animal: who is going to get the mate?And then there is the issue of lice and related pests that have a harder life in the less hairy clothed individual than in his more hirsuit companion. And absence of disease and parasites is a well known marker for sexual preference.In one sense all life is due to sexual selection (but you have to consider single cell division a kind of ?masturbation?)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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The question of the vitamin D is interesting, but then it should apply to all animals, and we should see a lot more 'hairless' mammals (hairlessness in non-mammals being irrelevant).man
elephant
rhino
hippo (albeit with caveat)
mole-rat (with a different caveat)
sea mammals (with strong caveat)
a hairless cat (that doesn't swim, which, with the very hairy cat that does, effectively refutes the "aquatic ape" theory)that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.the Vitamin D theory should be testable with these and their near kin.the caveats have to do with other factors making hair\fur a disadvantage than just heat\cooling modulation and the critters involved also being in fairly temperature homogeneous environments.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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hence the caveat on the hippo in my listand the elephant and the rhino are substantially larger creatures and that changes the {heating\cooling} dynamics considerablyif running were the criteria then cheatahs would have significantly less fur eh?ps -- add waterbuffalo, same caveat.This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-07-2005 09:06 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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ever shaved a spotted animal? the coloration can be on the skin as well

That the presence of {fur\hair} is not critical to a camouflaged appearance.added by edit:humans are the only 'hairless' apes we were talking about other 'hairless' animals as a way of considering other causes for this feature. the others listed are all much larger body mass, which could indicate a correlation with {heat\cool} control, but there are other hirsuit animals in between that also generate extra heat by running down prey.it may be that early humans took this to an extreme when they learned to "walk down" prey: keeping on the trail until the animal exausts itself. it may be that humans found this niche because they could not run down the prey nor approach it easily in a stealth mode. thus this behavior may have driven evolution of less hair as those better able to do it were better able to survive. problem here are the migratory animals, migrating great distances with little food intake if any.This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-07-2005 15:12 AM

also see
EvC Forum: Homo floresiensisfor a forum thread on this discovery.

on the links -- you don't need to worry about making them work, that is automatic. the only time you need to fuss with them is when they are long (usually a google result will show an extra long url because it has the link through the google search site), and admin usually takes care of those.

none?a predator even. (but with that old caveat of water friction selecting for low drag skin over fur and constant temperature allowing loss of fur once sufficient body size is reached)the plain fact is that most mammals are hairy furballs.This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-10-2005 22:07 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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then there are long distance runners with more body mass than humans that should also select for {less\no} hair, wildebeasts can run longer than humans.it is not our long distance running that {allows\allowed} humans to catch more fleet of foot animals, but the persistence and ability to track said animals and actually {walk\jog} them down rather than just run.attributing our {rare} loss of hair to our {unique} long-distance ability in this regard is a logical (causal) fallacy -- they are not necessarily connected.{typos}This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-11-2005 20:51 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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I agree, but I also note that there is really no fully "hairless" mammal that I am aware of. Certainly human does not qualify. It is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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Jogging is more like a half run in speed and endurance. Boy Scouts are taught that a mix of jogging and walking is the best way to cover ground in emergency situations - that is where I first learned of it (some say from Baden-Powell himself ), but I have also run into reference of it in african and n.american pursuit of game animals. It applies in forest and jungle as much as on savannah. It is an intelligent rationing of endurance in order to achieve a future goal, if you will.And I repeat: Attributing our {rare} loss of hair to our {unique} long-distance ability in this regard is a logical (causal) fallacy -- they are not necessarily connected.It seems to me that long distance pursuit of prey animals is also tied in with wearing camouflage, and that clothes and reduction of parasites also involves sexual selection: it could easily be a number of factors all coming to together, any two of which could have been sufficient.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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heh. body lice, reduced by loss of hair.This message has been edited by RAZD8, 01-12-2005 19:33 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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agreedThis message has been edited by RAZD8, 01-12-2005 19:33 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}