The oldest clothing ever recovered has been dated to nearly 5,500 years old, found within a pile of dirty linen at the cemetery of Tarkin in Egypt in 1913. The Tarkin dress was discovered by museum conservators in 1977, and is considered to be some of the best evidence for clothing in the past, although ancient clothing is generally too fragile to survive in the archaeological record. In 1964 and 2008, fragmented pieces of woven textiles were discovered at the 9,000-year-old site of Chatal Huk in Turkey, and were later determined to be made from plant fibers, providing evidence for clothing approximately 8,500 years ago.

However, the oldest evidence for clothing is believed to be a fragmented needle with a point so thin that archaeologists interpret it as being used to delicately pierce through animal hide, found in the Sabodo cave in South Africa, and dated to approximately 61,000 years old. Despite the difficulties in finding evidence for clothing, archaeologists have discovered a series of processes involved in creating clothing, including turning fibers into fabric and cutting and sewing that fabric together, and have also found tools that suggest their use in clothing production.