In other words, why did humans start feeling shame?
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Nobody knows. But the safe money is a lot of different things sort of coincided.
– The development of monogamy requires long term partnerships to support the life of vulnerable children/mothers; very long gestation, then very long development period. To ensure males stick with a female, and that a female retains the spawn of the original male, clothing can help reduce stimulation of sex drive in males and thus increase chance of survival.
– Clothing can be developed into better and more pleasing forms, but it takes time/money, so a great way to show off your wealth/power is to develop more elaborate clothes, and more of them, which covers you more.
– Development of religions led to a benefit when they decided to declare that people should be more chaste. Socially it reduces complications from sex with multiple partners. For the clergy it gives them a means of control over the populace. It also adds a ritual aspect which enabled the religious in-group to reinforce its norms and that increases the power of leaders as well as the dedication to the group/religion.
– A lot of people may have mental issues like poor self worth or have been abused and the feeling of shame helps reinforce their poor self image. This goes well with a religion that calls a lot of things shameful.
– After a while people got used to the idea of body shame and taught it to their children and it became self perpetuating.
– Victorian England took it to extremes and linked the body to virtue, such that covering yourself became one of the primary ways to show you were a good person. They even made up a lot of propaganda about the past to reinforce the idea that when people used to not cover themselves, everything was horrible. These ideas are still present in our society as misconceptions about the history of sex and comfort with bodies.
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