contracycle writes:
Yes minimalist clothing is worn in the tropics, but that just raises the question again - if clothing is unnecessary in the tropics, why does anyone where any at all?
Like I said before, perhaps walking upright made it necessary to display the sex organ all the time, and to some societies this became somewhat of an intimidation.
Another reason is christianity.
Anyway, I grew up in Vietnam and I can assure you that it's not warm and humid all the time. Sometimes it gets unbearably cold, and I'm speaking as someone that is used to North American winters.
I'm not convinced "because it is cold" is an adequate answer. It's cold for animals too, yet they either stick it out and adapt or migrate.
Well, if we didn't have an evolutionary advantage such as our brain power, we would probably have stuck it up too. You are forgetting the human factor. It's like asking why aren't we going around raping every female we could find just so we could plant our seeds? Well, we can think.
And of course some don't - some stone age societies consider a rough belt and a feather in the hair to be superbly turned out. There are certain contexts in which even a Zulu wearing only a penis-sheath would be over-dressed. And I point out, it gets pretty cold in Zulu country on the big open plains in winter, and can even snow from time to time.
Well, I guess they decided to stick it up like the animal. Nothing wrong with that.
Anyway, at one point, I said that the cold wasn't the only reason and that my position was nothing more than an educated guess.