When Did Humans Start Wearing Clothes?

In the nineteenth century, the English philosopher Thomas Carlyle said that "the first intention of clothing was not to warm or decency, but for ornamental purposes."

Many accept that our ancient ancestors were primates and that they were covered with hair to preserve their temperature and protect themselves. If Carlyle was right, we must ask ourselves what induced the first human beings to adorn their bodies with clothes.

It is almost certain that Carlyle was wrong. The Homo erectus, which appeared about 1.5 million years ago and survived until about 500,000 BC, migrated north and south of the warm tropical regions. He used the fire, discovered perhaps by accident in fires provoked by lightning, to warm himself and maybe he had used it to cook, which helped him to enter in colder regions.

200,000 to 120,000 years ago, the successors of the Homo Erectus came even farther north, to arid extreme regions affected by the last of the great glaciations. To survive there, they needed more than the heat he used to fire. The Neanderthal man used torches to illuminate the interior of his caves, and it is almost certain that he made primitive clothes with animal skins.

Modern man, Homo sapiens spread from Europe and Asia to Australia and New Guinea almost 50,000 years ago. Whether or not these people wore clothes seems to have depended mainly on their need to protect themselves from the weather or from their enemies.
Modesty perhaps influenced very little, since it is not an innate characteristic of the human being. Children learn to cover their bodies, and the customs that determine which parts of the body can be exposed vary in each society. For example, among the Indians of Brazil, women are naked, but they would be ashamed if they saw them without their wooden ornaments in their mouths and ears.

On the other side, the dress can be a form of ornament or a symbol of success. Fashion began as a way to show the differences between groups or social classes. It revealed who the masters were and who the slaves were. Clothing can also communicate specific information, such as singleness or widowhood, the nature of an occupation or a religion.

Reference - The World of The Why?

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