We all come to this world in the same way. We are all born naked. Covered with creamy-looking substance called vernix caseosa, but still – completely naked.
No one was ever born with tuxedo or a dress.
Nonetheless, as soon we are born, someone puts some kind of clothes on us. At first this is mostly diaper or some kind of blanket. And then during the course of growing up, clothes become more complicated each year. This is cultural standard in today’s society – everybody has to be dressed. At least in public.
So with that in mind, let’s try to hypothesize what would happen in society with everyone in the world completely naked. And I mean everywhere, at your own house, in the mall, in school, in workplace, in church. Everywhere!
History of Nakedness and First Clothing
But first, let’s learn more about history of dressing up and history of naturism or freikörperkultur, commonly known as FKK.
There aren’t many studies researching about when people first started wearing clothes, but still some researches devoted their time and knowledge to do exactly that. Principal investigator David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus initiated one interesting study. His latest five-year study used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice.
“We wanted to find another method for trying to find when humans might have first started wearing clothing,” Reed said. “Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn’t exist until clothing came about in humans.”
The numbers shows that humans started wearing clothes about 70,000 years before migrating into colder climates, which began approximately 100,000 years ago.
The study also shows that people started wearing clothes well after they lost body hair, which genetic skin-coloration research pinpoints at about 1 million years ago, meaning humans spent a significant amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed said.
Other researchers agree with the premise that fur-loss and eccrine gland-gain coevolved for thermoregulation during human evolution and that this happened after our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and before the origins of Homo sapiens. So that basically narrows it down to sometime between about nine million and 300,000 years ago. It is really a huge spread of potential time, but hey, that’s all we have.
If we dig deeper into archeological data – earliest possible evidence for clothing in ancient humans is stone tools found at archaeological sites like Gran Dolina in the Spanish Atapuerca Mountains (associated with Homo antecessor and dated to around 780,000 years ago), or in Schöningen in Germany (Homo heidelbergensis, around 400,000 years ago).
Additionally, we see clearer evidence from the Neanderthals, who lived as far back as 400,000 years ago. Despite having bodies that were more cold-adapted than ours, a 2012 study estimated that Neanderthals may have needed to cover up to 80 per cent of their bodies to survive the harsh winters.
So, obviously we have many different clues in many different studies but we can surely conclude that our ancestors started wearing clothes very early on. Those, of course, weren’t clothes designed for beauty purposes but mainly for survival.
There are still many tribes around the world who wear similar clothes to those 100 000 years ago. They cover the most sensitive parts and that’s it.
Naturism in Modern Times
Fast forward to today’s world, we are covering everything from toe to head, depending on the culture. We are even dressing up our dolls. But one thing is certain almost everywhere – sexual organs must be covered to participate in society. You cannot just walk out of your apartment completely naked and expect that nothing would happen. You would be arrested in a matter of minutes probably. That’s the law in many countries.
And nobody likes to be arrested. Not to mention that people would look at you like you’re complete lunatic.
Nonetheless, in today’s world there is also subculture called naturism or FKK. Basically, people who like to be naked in areas where it is allowed to do so. There are a lot of beaches, camps and resorts worldwide where everyone is naked. This is specifically popular in Europe.
Naturism dates back more than one hundred years. Earliest known naturist place in the world was in British Columbia. It was founded by Charles Edward Gordon Crawford, a widower, who was a District and Sessions Judge for the Bombay Civil Service at Thana.
During 1900’s, many places opened up for naturism or FKK culture. Croatia is a good example of that. History of organized naturist vacations in Croatia goes back in 1930’s. The island of Rab is rightly referred to as the pioneer of naturism on the Adriatic.
In today’s time there are hundreds beaches and naturist camps only in Croatia, not to count thousands around Europe and in the world.
But this is so called organized naturism, people agree to come to those places and walk around naked. And this is good. I respect that kind of freedom and culture in every possible way.
Hypothesis: Everyone is Naked in Today’s World
However let’s go back to main topic of this article trying to hypothesize what would happen if everyone suddenly decides to become naturist everywhere.
So, first – just try to imagine that all people are without clothes. And I mean without any clothes and I mean everywhere.
At first, everyone would be very much sexually aroused. You would look at your first door cute neighbor and think: “OMG his or her body looks even better now”. But then again you would be also amazed by how some people look very bad without clothes.
Clothes can cover many shortcomings of our bodies that almost all of us have. Without clothes – everything is in the open. Literally.
Would people start having intercourse on the streets in this “naked society” scenario? I don’t think so. Looking constantly at naked people actually removes part of excitement. After a while everybody would probably become completely dull about sexuality and mysticism of how would someone look without the clothes, that we are accustomed today.
But still, it would be very weird for majority of people. Especially in public spaces. Just imagine packed trains, trams and other means of public transportation. You seat on the chair in the bus while someone’s “organ” is staring at you five centimeters (1.9685 inches) away from you.
Interesting situation ha?
Yet, what about potential health consequences?
As we are accustomed to wearing clothes all the time, our health would suffer for sure. At least in the beginnings as human body can adjust to new environment very soon. Nonetheless, infection diseases, whether those are skin diseases or some form of STD’s would skyrocket probably.
Then we arrive at business meetings. How would that look like? You discuss about your company’s budget with 10 different people, and everyone is naked.
Joe says – “So we need to empower our people to do more so we can increase our pipeline to beat the budget.”
While Joe is saying that everybody is staring at his belly (for example) and thinking about some weird stuff.
Again we could conclude that business meetings with naked people would not end up in a positive way.
Then, lets move on to supermarkets. How would that look like? Probably similarly like business meetings. Either funny or weird.
What about church? Even weirder, especially imagining priest citing Bible without any clothes.
And then to conclude with this imaginary scenario and hypothesis of a nude society, let’s think about porn industry. What would happen to them? Well, I think they wouldn’t do well. Sure, some people would still look at porn, but many would be disgusted completely.
Conclusion
Having said all that, nude society couldn’t exist all of the sudden in today’s world. Everything would be weird, every interaction with people would be completely different.
But hey, this is just an amusing hypothesis which will (probably) never come to be true. Yet it has been reality for our ancestors. But then, back in the day they had different problems than we have in today’s society. Clothes for sure were not in top 10 priorities for them as it is now top 1 priority for many so called stars and social media influencers.
Note: If you’re interested in similar articles, on topic of “What would world look like”, you can check:
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