# First Society / Culture to wear clothes for modesty reasons only... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 27, 2006, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-society-culture-to-wear-clothes-for-modesty-reasons-only/381931 "2006-11-27T13:09:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Vitcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ea5d25/32.png) [@Vitcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vitcher)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-society-culture-to-wear-clothes-for-modesty-reasons-only/381931/1 "2006-11-27T13:09:50Z")
This may not be necessarily factually answerable; but thought I’d ask anyhow. What was the very first tribe / culture / society to ‘decide’ that the clothes should be worn for _specifically_ modesty reasons, rather than for decoration / protection from elements / ease of carrying items etc… It seems a lot of existing tribes have had their dress codes ‘amended’ in (relatively speaking) recent times by missionaries who invoked a sense of guilt over expressed nudity that never existed before. But I suspect that the covering of (female) breasts or genitals would have been practiced much earlier; but how far back? Did, say, c.5000-2500 Yangshao / Longshan cultures in China have dress codes for modesty reasons, or Indian cultures , or people in Mesopotamia maybe? Or perhaps any culture with sufficient organisation to have records and thus be remembered had _already_ codified dress codes in place before records began? Thanks for any insight. ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-society-culture-to-wear-clothes-for-modesty-reasons-only/381931/2 "2006-11-27T14:39:39Z")
The first recorded example would be the tribe known as the Edenites. They originally made clothes out of fig leaves. 😃