Long before cities rose, before words were written, and long before we measured time, we were on the move. And as we moved, we carried. But our hands, clever as they are, were not enough. So, we created the bag.
The First Carriers
Imagine a time when survival was the only priority. Early humans gathered food, crafted tools, and roamed landscapes that offered no permanence. In this nomadic life, carrying essentials was not a convenience… it was a necessity.
The earliest "bags" were humble: animal hides tied with sinew, woven reeds fashioned into slings, bark folded and bound with fibre. These rudimentary carriers served the most primal purpose to free our hands and extend our capabilities.
Anthropologists believe bags have existed for tens of thousands of years, though organic materials rarely survive in archaeological records. Still, the clues remain; rock art depicting figures with slings, and ancient tools stored in preserved leather pouches.
The bag, in its most basic form, was born from movement and need.
From Survival to Society
As human societies formed, the bag began to evolve not just as a tool, but as a symbol.
In Ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs show men and women carrying cloth satchels. Bags held cosmetics, scrolls, herbs the essentials of an ordered life.
In Mesopotamia, leather pouches and embroidered belts contained the earliest currencies, grain, beads, and silver rings.
In Ancient China and India, silk and cotton pouches were often tucked into robes or suspended from belts, carrying prayer beads, coins, or medicine.
The bag, once an object of raw utility, began to mirror culture, class, and belief. It no longer just carried; it told stories.
The Warrior's Pouch and the Merchant's Satchel
Across civilizations, different professions birthed new kinds of bags.
Roman soldiers carried the loculus, a leather satchel that held everything a legionnaire might need on the march: food rations, tools, even letters from home.
Nomadic traders crossing the Silk Road slung cross-body bags filled with spices, coins, and artifacts their lives packed into canvas and hide.
In medieval Europe, before pockets existed, everyone from peasants to nobles carried small pouches called girdle purses, attached to their belts. For the poor, it was a necessity. For the rich, it became a canvas for embroidery, jewels, and family crests.
What once carried meat and flint now carried identity.
The Bag Becomes Personal
As the world grew more structured, the bag began to specialize and personalize.
In 16th-century Japan, samurai carried info (a small, compartmentalized case traditionally worn by Japanese men, especially samurai, during the Edo period 1603–1868), tiered containers held by cords, storing medicines and seals. They were often lacquered and carved personal and ornamental.
In Africa, beaded and patterned bags served as ceremonial objects. The designs spoke of tribe, role, and rank.
In Indigenous America, parfleche cases were made from rawhide and painted with symbols, used to carry tools, clothing, and food across vast lands.
The bag had become more than a companion. It became an extension of the person.
The Bag and the Human Experience
Throughout time, the bag adapted to every human experience war and worship, trade and travel, migration and memory. It became a vessel for both the physical and the spiritual. It held not just objects, but rituals, languages, histories, and hope.
We filled them with herbs for healing. Letters never sent. Food for the journey. Treasures from afar. They bore the weight of our days, quietly.
From Andean carriers woven with alpaca wool, to Middle Eastern saddle bags for desert caravans, from European reticules of the 18th century to the shoulder bags of shepherds in the Balkans the bag crossed geography and class.
It was the great equalizer necessary for kings and farmers alike. It evolved with us from survival, to trade, to status, to expression. And even today, in a world vastly different from the one where it began, the bag remains what it always was: A symbol of movement.
A Silent Witness
The bag has been there for the births, the journeys, the departures, and the returns. It has carried tools, prayers, memories, and dreams. Simple in form, endless in function, rich in story the bag is one of the few objects that has truly travelled with humanity through every age.
And as long as we keep moving, we’ll keep reaching for something to carry what matters.
