For the vast majority of our history, we have been walking around mostly or completely naked.
We basically don't need to be naked anymore.
Humans lost their fur over one million years ago.
In those early days, we were really sort of beginning to be modern in every way, anatomically,
including having really long legs and a powerful striding anatomy that allowed us to be really,
really active in open sunny environments.
Many experts believe humans became hairless to be able to sweat.
Then they began to cover-up to suit the environment they were in.
We were covering up really, for functional reasons.
It's only been in the last few 100,000 years that people have routinely covered themselves
with anything.
And it's only been in the last, 30,000 years, that people have walked around
with anything resembling clothing.
And probably the first covers were pieces of leaf or fur.
Somewhere along our evolution humans began to feel shame.
Shame associated with nakedness appears to be a constructed concept that probably came
in agricultural settlements, where people saw one another
day in and day out and when the absence of covering would indicate some kind of impropriety.
Colonialism is also thought to have changed the way we view nakedness.
The very term nakedness is itself culturally loaded.
There's a way in which by the 18th century at the very latest, there's this indelible association in the West, between nakedness and savagery, or primitiveness.
Nakedness is now often reserved for very intimate scenes or statements.
or for political or artistic statements.
It's not like we're genetically wired to wear clothing or be naked, it's something that
we adopt.
And we, as part of our socialisation process early in childhood, learn that there are certain
contexts in which it's okay to be partially or completely naked, but mostly not.