How did primitive man cope with things like body oil, pimples, and cold weather?

February 5, 2008 8:41 AM

How did primitive man cope with things like body oil, pimples, and cold weather?

Most people take showers regularly and wear warm clothes when its cold but if we don't we get ill. How did primitive man cope?

Before they were able to make warm clothing, did excess body oil keep them warm? Did they just get used to the cold like feral children? Did they sweat a lot, unclogging their facial pores, or did they suffer teenage acne problems too?

Explanations of areas I haven't covered is welcome.

posted by gttommy to science & nature (28 comments total)

If people were nomadic, they would move to areas that are warmer. There would also be the idea of seeking shelter in caves.

As for other things, I don't know how far back our ancestors were killing animals and making garments out of the fur and hide so I won't speculate but if someone knows, I would be interested.
posted by mmascolino at 8:51 AM on February 5, 2008

Well if you are thinking of primordial man, then he kept warm by staying in central and Africa where he evolved. I would imagine that they got sweaty, but I would also imagine that they didn't give a shit because they were busy trying not to starve and avoid becoming something else's meal themselves.
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:52 AM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

How far back are we talking? This question's kinda useless chatfilter without that information.
posted by SpecialK at 8:57 AM on February 5, 2008

Huh. Good question. I wonder if Clan-Of-The-Cave-Bear-type fire tending - keeping a coal from a forest fire going, as opposed to knowing how to start a fire from scratch - or wearing skins came first?
posted by XMLicious at 9:02 AM on February 5, 2008

Archaeologically speaking the answer is simple. We dont know and any answer is pure speculation. Well about everything except keeping warm. We have plenty of evidence of prehistoric peoples making clothing from animal skins and even plant fibers. The
Spirit Cave Man here in Nevada - which I was privilaged to view the remains - had these great rabbit fur stuffed boots and a vest made from reeds if I recall.

As for other biological functions, unless there's something associated with it that can survive many thousands of years, then the question is unanswerable. Sorry, no prehistoric version of zit cream ;-)
posted by elendil71 at 9:03 AM on February 5, 2008

Homo habilis and homo erectus were using stone tools a million years ago, before they were human=us. There's some evidence that homo erectus were using fire a million years ago, again long before we appeared. I would be astonished if fire-controlling tool-users didn't just make clothes of some sort to keep warm.

So I would bet that the question doesn't fully make sense because clothing predates primitive but anatomically-modern humans.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:04 AM on February 5, 2008

I think that Northern people evolved to have shorter limbs and thicker torsos to protect their vital organs from the cold. Isn't it also possible that our ancestors had a great deal more body hair than we do?
posted by lampoil at 9:05 AM on February 5, 2008

It's not really a stretch to suppose they might have put clay or mud on their faces to clean them.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:05 AM on February 5, 2008

Not showering does not make you ill -- just sort of smelly (but a different sort of smelly than if you or I miss a morning shower, more earthy and less of a sharp smell). Millions of Europeans skipped many, many baths and the continent remains populated. (That said, there are some health issues associated with not bathing and with wearing dirty clothes, but mostly it's more irritating like scabies and not so much something that will kill you like the plague.)

Even small groups of people can avoid being cold at night by sleeping in "body piles" -- Tobias Schneebaum described the remote cannibals he supposedly found in the jungle sleeping that way; dogs, cats, cattle, and other animals huddle for warmth; this is also how you often see street children sleeping, all wrapped around each other for warmth and safety. Once dogs were domesticated I imagine they would have been added to the tribal body pile for warmth, too.

There was a recent article, it might have been in the Economist, about how up until quite recently in rural France people essentially hibernated for the winter -- they all climbed into bed together and napped and dozed much of the winter months, conserving energy and food. So that may be part of your answer, too.

But don't forget that winter clothes date back a fairly long way -- think of that guy they found frozen in the ice -- he was wearing what looked like quite sophisticated cold weather gear -- our ancestors figured out how to deal with the cold as they left the warm parts of the planet
posted by Forktine at 9:10 AM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Pimples were probably pretty far down the list of grave concerns for our prehistoric ancestors.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 9:11 AM on February 5, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

A big argument that I have heard against cleaners, soaps, etc. is that they make your skin more oily because they actually strip the protective oils from your skin, making your body overproduce them and therefore oily.

As someone who did the smelly hippy seven weeks of back packing when he was 16, and only the only major washing being pretty much a dip in a lake or river (except for the hands, which were washed with soap and water) my face didn't magically break out in hives or pustules, and while my skin was not 'clean and clear' it was not a pepperoni pizza either.

As for staying warm, according to anthropologists we didn't start traveling out of the 'sun belt' until we were able to make clothes. Our human ancestor population was actually very small until we started using tools and fire to hunt animals, and cook the meat providing us more calories by allowing us to use sources of protein they had no access to before. Once the populations started booming, people started moving, and by the time they were moving, they were able to adapt to their environments.

This is considered by some the downfall of the Neanderthals, because Homo Sapien was able to adapt tools and utilize resources better than the Neanderthals, and some believe they were left to be assimilated by the larger population of Homo Sapiens.
posted by mrzarquon at 9:12 AM on February 5, 2008

Forktine- Dogs actually have a higher body temperature than us. There were even special hairless breeds developed to use as bed warmers (by the romans, i think). The term "three dog night" is supposed to refer a night so cold you need three dogs in your bed. As someone whose spent nights sharing a bed with a weimaraner, I can attest that those are some fierce little furnaces.
posted by mrzarquon at 9:15 AM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The cold mostly like wasn't a factor for illness for primitive man, assuming enough of a biological similarity.

There is no evidence that you can get a cold from exposure to cold weather or from getting chilled or overheated. - National Institutes of Health

The flu and colds are more common in the winter months because that is when the viruses spread across the country. It has nothing to do with being outside in cold weather. - American Lung Association
posted by Mikey-San at 9:52 AM on February 5, 2008

Oooh Forktine any links to the article you mentioned regarding life in rural France? My husband and I have a theory that this is how our great-grandparents survived Canadian winters.
posted by TorontoSandy at 9:59 AM on February 5, 2008

The oil in your hair becomes self-regulating if you don't wash it... probably on average oilier than most people now would be happy with but I saw people featured on a television program with naturally low levels of oil in their hair who don't bother with shampoo.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:01 AM on February 5, 2008

Re: Acne.

They might not hvae gotten it.

While the urban legends about chocolate and acne and greasy foods and acne is bullshit, there is some evidence that over time a diet very high in refined carbohydrates can cause an insulin spike, which can cause elevated levels of dihydrotestosterone in some individuals. DHT, besides being a culprit in male pattern bladness supposedly has a role in sebaceous glands going wild first step towards acne. I read an article where a French dermatologist, who thought that Acne and diet theory was BS noticed how modern hunter-gatherers almost never have acne, and develop it as soon as they begin to eat a Western diet. Other researchers have made the same connection. Its not proven but there is enough correlation to make researchers want to get some grant money.

Only link I can find on short notice
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2542801.stm
posted by xetere at 10:09 AM on February 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oooh Forktine any links to the article you mentioned regarding life in rural France?

It was in the New York Times, not the Economist:

As soon as the weather turned cold, people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end.

In the mountains, the tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. “Seven months of winter, five months of hell,” they said in the Alps. When the “hell” of unremitting toil was over, the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies. If someone died during the seven months of winter, the corpse was stored on the roof under a blanket of snow until spring thawed the ground, allowing a grave to be dug and a priest to reach the village.

The same mass dormancy was practiced in other chilly parts. In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending one-half of the year in sleep: “At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself” and “goes out to see if the grass is growing.”

It is unlikely this was hibernation in the zoological sense. While extreme cold might have set off a biological response normally seen only in squirrels, bears and marmots, human hibernation probably reflects a sensible, communal decision to stay in bed for as long as possible.
posted by Forktine at 10:11 AM on February 5, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

Take a look at "primitive men" that are still walking around today. I'm talking about South American Indians, Kalahari bushmen and South Pacific Islanders that are remote from modern society. Look at how they deal with issues. That's about how they used to do it in the old days.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:25 AM on February 5, 2008

How did primitive man cope with things like body oil, pimples, and cold weather?

Two words: lower expectations.
posted by Malor at 10:37 AM on February 5, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I recall reading an article a year or so ago that hypothesized that acne was a visual way of signaling *wink, wink* maturity.
posted by GarageWine at 10:59 AM on February 5, 2008

That's about how they used to do it in the old days.

Very ignorant statement. Such people are in no sense living fossils of past behaviour.

Also "primitive man" has no meaning. Many of the examples above are to fully modern, agricultural humans.

I know there are a bunch of other archaeologists on MeFi and this is not speciality, and I am not going to do a lot of reading to answer this, but, IIRC:

- clothing will survive very poorly in the archaeological record
- there are archaeological sites around 40,000 years old in the northern Urals at ca. 70 degrees North Latitude, which implies humans had clothing at that time. (ref, I think)
- such tools as bone needles and awls also appear by 40,000 years ago (
- some evidence for clothing suggested by early Upper Palaeolithic figurines depicted wearing clothing, hats, etc (at least according to Adovasio and Soffer) - summary
- Ukrainian shelters show controlled use of fire in indoor settings by 20,000 or more years ago, including cold air intakes
- earliest evidence of use of fire is around 1 million years ago
- no evidence that I know of exists for skin creams etc, at least not until the Bronze age or later - I believe some Irish bog men had an exotic hair mousse, for example, that contained materials from southern Europe. But then, not exactly "primitive". ref.
- topical, medicinal creams would quite likely have existed for tens of thousands of years. Even chimps have knowledge of medicinal plants, and humans have made complex, multi-ingredient pastes since ca. 50,000 BP, mainly glues and later, paints. (ref)
- many diseases such as colds and who knows, skin infections, post-date the domestication of animals, say 10,000 years ago - zoonotic diseases
- though people have had lice for quite some time, ca. 50,000 years, and this may reflect when they started to lose body hair and wear clothing. ref.
- as Malor hints, "lower expectations" -- though more accurately, acclimitization to different conditions: physiological responses such as reduced sweating in hot climates, sinus configuration in cold. In this sense alone, modern humans may provide some adaptive/physiological analogies. For example, Inuit children did not wear clothes inside igloos, where the ambient air temperature was around minus 4 degrees celsius. summary
posted by Rumple at 11:24 AM on February 5, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I've read a bit about the Wampanoags, the native North Americans of southeastern Massachusetts; mmascolino is right, they lived on the coast in the summer and moved inland in the winter. (The design of their houses was much more efficient than that of their Pilgrim counterparts, they needed much less wood and the interior temperature was a lot warmer.) Soap was completely unknown to them until the Europeans introduced it; they swam in lakes to stay clean, and apparently their deerskin clothing was beneficial to the skin. Sorry I can't remember more.
posted by Melismata at 11:34 AM on February 5, 2008

The other fact that hasn't been mentioned is that a whole lot of people didn't cope with harsh weather (either cold or hot). They've found prehistoric human remains in the far north, which indicates that at least some of our distant ancestors made it that far, but most of those who did probably didn't last very long.
posted by cerebus19 at 1:04 PM on February 5, 2008

That's about how they used to do it in the old days.

Very ignorant statement. Such people are in no sense living fossils of past behaviour.

Oh, horseshit. You're missing the forest for the trees. If you're living in Africa in a house made out of sticks and mud, the materials used in your house design haven't changed much in several thousand years.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:37 PM on February 5, 2008

If you're living in Africa in a house made out of sticks and mud, the materials used in your house design haven't changed much in several thousand years.

Cool. I didn't realize they had cameras several thousand years ago. Fascinating.
posted by Rumple at 2:35 PM on February 5, 2008

There was as recent study on the evolution of human lice. That is when did head lice split from body lice? This would indicate when humans began to frequently wear clothing. The study indicated 72,000 years ago, plus or minus 42,000 years.
posted by ShooBoo at 4:14 PM on February 5, 2008

I imagine early man living in a cooler climate would have figured-out that fur was warm and draping themselves in pelts would ward off the cold. No clothing making skill required. I think this would have coincided with movement from warmer regions. Many likely did freeze to death though.

Depending on beliefs (no flamewars please), going back further, one could consider evolution from having fur. Presumably over millions of years fur would thin and be lost if it's not needed, such as in the warmer climate of Africa. Or, if you believe in Sasquatch, retained in cooler mountainous regions. Man, being impatient and territorial, would have expanded-out faster than evolution, and with the ability to skin their kills, this rudimentary clothing would decrease the need to re-develop more dense body hair.

For cleanliness, while they may not have had showers, regular exposure to the elements, rain and snow, maybe the occasional stream or river crossing, would serve to keep them from gathering too much filth I think. Also, most animals I think groom themselves to a certain extent, early man probably would have the same instinct.

/not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, just random musings over a glass of wine
posted by hungrysquirrels at 4:30 PM on February 5, 2008

Malor: How did primitive man cope with things like body oil, pimples, and cold weather?

Two words: lower expectations.

I suspect that primitive man weren't so averse to any form of discomfort that he couldn't stand outdoors for three minutes to pump his gas by hand, for example. Archaeological digs have turned up no ancient gas-pump "kick stands" to date.
posted by loiseau at 10:26 PM on February 5, 2008