74. Dress
The slender bone needle provided with an eye which the Solutrean and Magdalenian added to the primitive awl implies thread and sewing. It may be concluded therefore that, at least from the middle of the Upper Palæolithic on, the people of Europe went clothed in some sort of fitted garments. It would be going too far to assert that the Neandertal men ran about naked as the lower animals. Several inventions which they had made compel us to attribute to them enough intelligence to lead them to cover themselves with skins when they felt cold. But they may have been too improvident, or habituated to discomfort, to trouble even to dress hides. At any rate there is no positive indication that they regularly clothed themselves. By contrast, the sewing of the Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnons marked a considerable advance.
Ornament may have been earlier than clothing. The paint of the Aurignacians decorated their own bodies and those of their dead. About their necks and waists they hung rows of perforated shells and teeth. More of these have been found on the skeletons of males than of females. By the Magdalenian, there was sophistication enough to lead to the carving of artificial shells and teeth out of ivory; and amber was beginning to be transported from the German coast to Southern France.