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maximillian_arturo t1_j9snh0n wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in When a builder found a dirty old boot under Hobart barracks, little did he know he'd stumbled upon rare treasure - Major find for early colonial history in Australia. by ArtOak

I mean fabric doesn't hold up as well as metal. Same reason why all old manuscripts are written on stone or clay. Cause the manuscripts that were written on less durable materials, like papyrus, just deteriorate over time.

And people don't really see the need to hold on to old, worn clothing. If you find it 20 years after people stop wearing it, it's just old clothes. It doesn't become interesting for a couple hundred years. At that point most of it will have been thrown out, repurchased, or just disintegrated.

Similar to the jeans that were worn by original gold miners out west in the US. There are people who search through old mine shafts just searching for denim. It's valuable because there aren't many that have made it.

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Dont_PM_PLZ t1_j9v32xg wrote

And it's not like the fabric cooling was made from was not turned in something else. It can be sold in the second hand market for poor people to reuse as they need. Or could you kept and recut to a new style or a new size. For example the husband's clothing would get resized or cut down defect one son then is it where out again would recut to a smaller sun and at that point it could be reused as stuffing, rags or used up in a quilt. And you can imagine how many uses a woman's skirt or dress could be used on. The further back you go the more likely in Western fashion the simpler the shape of the clothing pieces. So we'll have extremely long chain of uses before they essentially become utterly useless. Even to that point their industries where they'll turn used beat up cloth back into fiber for other uses. Typically called rags, but not the modern idea of a washcloth. For example the US dollar bill system uses rag fibers in making the paper part of the bill.

That's just a human side of things. Since all the vipers were natural the silks and wolves would be getting eaten by bugs because it's protein. And then the cotton, women in plant fibers mold would love because it's literally a plant. And the talks of decomposing reveals by one pet peeve if you ever see a a skeleton it would never have its clothing still viable in any form because all the bacteria and fungus that decomposes the flush with annihilate the fibers of clothing. But it's only since the past 80 to 90 years that synthetic fiber has been a thing that you might be able to see large chunks of the clothing still intact. Because it's literally plastic.

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