John Dryden, 1672.
I
Royal Robes and Beaver Hats
It might be said that man’s first true possession was the fur skin of an animal.
Prehistoric mankind prowled the earth seeking food, shelter and mates—only those needs intended by nature to preserve him and to perpetuate his species. He had no accumulated wealth. Even his first crude weapons, rocks and sticks, were expendable. He had nothing material to treasure until he began to acquire coverings for his body.
Body coverings must have become useful to primitive man in the last glacial period, during the very evolution of human society. His earliest needs were doubtless served by the pelts of such cold-climate animals as the reindeer and the bear. Once Homo sapiens, stretched out on the floor of a chilly cave, experienced the warmth of fur skins accumulated from these animals that he had eaten, it could have been but a short step to using pelts as clothing. All the world was not cold however.
In the middle latitudes early man knew little of thickly furred animals, and had less need for warm garments. He used foliage, grasses and eventually goat and sheep skins as skirts to hide his uncleanness. It was probably no more than modesty, a primal sense of shame, that first prompted him to cover himself. Later, as he learned to shape and weave and to appreciate his art, he fashioned his clothing for adornment.
Then it was that pelts stripped from bowed chiefs of the colder countries came to be prized as rarities of beauty and usefulness, as kingly trophies. Conquerors adopted them as ornaments and symbols of victory and power. Fur became prime loot. For many generations of man, while contacts between peoples remained essentially war-like, prize pelts from the farthest corners of the known world were brought home by warriors as evidence of their prowess and as tribute to their rulers.
Some rulers among the rising civilizations of the ancient world made extravagant use of fur skins, especially the brightly hued pelts of the big cats.
Tradition has it that the voluptuous Assyrian queen, Semiramis, acquired eight thousand tiger skins during a plundering campaign in India. Presumably, much of this loot was used to decorate the palace and hanging gardens of sinful Babylon which this storied enchantress is supposed to have founded.