Humans began wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, scientists claim. The development allowed our ancestors to keep warm at the start of the second most recent ice age, and allowed them to spread beyond Africa. Scientists arrived at the 170,000-year figure after DNA tests on lice showed that this was the time that body lice, which thrive on clothing, evolved from head lice.

Dr David Reed, of Florida University, said: ‘Because they are so well adapted to ­clothing, we know body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn’t exist until clothing came about in humans.’The study shows modern humans started wearing clothes roughly 70,000 years before migrating into colder climates. This date would be virtually impossible to determine through archaeology as early clothing would not have survived for so long.

Dr Reed, whose study is published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, said it also revealed a gap of about 830,000 years between our ancestors losing heavy body hair and starting to wear clothes. He added: ‘It is interesting to think humans were able to survive in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years without clothing and without body hair, and that it was not until they had clothing that modern humans were then moving out of Africa.’