Did Neanderthals wear clothes?

Braving the cold weather in Northern Europe required Neanderthals to have robust bodies and a facility for making fire. But did they wear clothes? Indirect evidence suggests that Neanderthals living in cold regions almost certainly dressed themselves head to toe in leather and furs. However, we've never actually found Neanderthal clothing or clothing remnants.

"Unfortunately, we're likely never actually going to get archaeological evidence of Neanderthal clothes," Cara Ocobock, a human biologist at the University of Notre Dame, told Live Science. "That stuff doesn't preserve well."

Cold-adapted humans

Neanderthals lived as far north as Siberia. Their broad chests, noses, shoulders and pelvises, as well as their short limbs, let them conserve body heat in the frigid climates where they lived.

"I like to think of them as the linebackers of human evolution," Ocobock said. One way of supporting that "linebacker" physique was to eat lots of meat, which also increased the amount of body heat Neanderthals produced, Ocobock said. Neanderthals also could keep warm by being active and sitting around a fire when they relaxed.

Related: Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?

But "they absolutely would have needed some other barrier outside of their own skin to help maintain their internal body temperature," Ocobock said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they had a variety of coverings both to the face, the head, arms, legs, hands, feet — all of that."

Evidence for clothing

Although evidence of ancient clothing exists from later, anatomically modern humans — such as the leather outfit of 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Ice Man — no one has found similar evidence at Neanderthal sites.