A (Not Very Serious) History of Handbags
Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, A Neathderthal man dropped his flintstone. He panicked but was pleased to see that the new fangled thing hadn't chipped for that would have spoiled the clean edge of this new cutting technology. Grunting in exasperation, he looked around the valley and spotted a big leaf from a kind of tree that is long gone from the earth. After a moment of thought, the man squatted beside the leaf and touched it gently. It was supple and strong and would bend without cracking. He sighed in satisfaction and dropped his few meagre belongings on top of the leaf. Gathering the edges together he twisted the top and set off toward the dim glow in the sky that marked his home camp fire.
Who really knows who fashioned the first bag? It might have been made of leaf or of leftover scraps of skin but it is certain that ancient nomadic people would have used their wit to create first a functional item and then over time a more adorned version which bestowed status on the carrier. Though the bag itself being made of organic material would have decomposed altogether there is scientific evidence that the Natufian of the Jordon plain made use of bags over 14,000 years ago.
Although these bags would have been purely functional - their owners certainly didn't need extra baggage in their lives - over time they would also have become something of a status symbol with added animal teeth or shells to show how important the owner was. Oh, how little things change.
Whatever you might think of man-bags, as a decorative more than functional accessory, they are the fore-runner of our beloved designer handbags today. There was a time when no fine gentlemen would venture into the street, without his little pouch filled with scent to keep the stench of the hoi polloi from polluting his delicate nostrils.
Wherever there is a trend there is a whole new strain of scallywags just waiting to exploit it, and sure enough a tribe of cut-purses was born that sliced the gentlemens' pockets from their fine little silken strings and made off with whatever goodies were held inside. Today's bag snatchers probably descend from that particular branch of the evolutionary tree.
Considering that a top end designer handbag can cost more than an average family car our early ancestor might have made a mint if only he had thought to patent his leaf-twist tote. Who knows, given the regular swing back to all things retro, maybe one day we'll see faux bearskin tunics and cave-bags carted down the catwalk by the hottest models of the day.
Don't laugh! If anyone is stupid enough to pay over $100,000 for a Birkin bag, just think what a 'genuine' Neanderthal knapsack migh go for.