Stone Age mini-skirts and prehistoric women with a passion for fashion
By DAVID DERBYSHIRE
For four decades, fashion gurus have argued over the origins of the mini-skirt.
Some say Mary Quant came up with the design in the Swinging Sixties, while some point to Frenchmen Andre Courreges. Some experts even claim it made its first appearance in Hollywood 10 years earlier.
But now archaeologists say the true origins of the mini go back to the very dawn of civilisation.
They have unearthed evidence that Stone Age women were warning mini-skirts - along with short tops and bracelets - more than 7,500 years ago.
A series of stone figurines wearing the prehistoric fashions were unearthed at one of Europe's oldest known villages - a community that nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Siberia.
The finding pushes back the origins of fashion and art in Europe by hundreds of years to a time when our ancestors were first getting to grips with farming.
Little is known about the life of people - known as the Vinca - who made the figurines.
The Vinca culture flourished between 5500 and 4000 BC in Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia. It got its name from the present-day village of Vinca on the Danube River near Belgrade where eight villages have been found.
The latest discoveries suggest these early farmers had developed a sophisticated division of labour and organisation.
