Humanity has used animal hides since the Paleolithic (beginning approximately 400,000 years ago) for clothing, mobile shelters such as tipis and wigwams, and household items. Since ancient times, hides have also been used as a writing medium in the form of parchment.

Fur clothing was used by other hominids (at least the Neanderthals), although their use was probably limited to rudimentary capes based on thermal-modeling studies that indicate the necessity of additional insulation for survival in glacial climates. Rawhide is a simple hide product which stiffens. Formerly used for binding pieces of wood together, it is primarily found in drum skins.

Tanning of hides to manufacture leather was invented during the Paleolithic, with the earliest evidence of hide-processing tools found at Hoxne in England and Qesem cave, Israel, dating to about 400,000 years ago.

Parchment for writing was introduced during the Bronze Age, and was later refined into vellum before paper became common.

The Australian National University's Ian Gilligan wrote that hominids without fur would have needed leather clothing to survive outside the tropics in mid-latitude Eurasia, southern Africa and the Levant during the cold glacial and stadial periods of the Ice Age, and there is archaeological evidence for the use of hide and leather in the Paleolithic. Simple, unmodified stone flakes could have been used to scrape hides for tanning, but scraper tools are more specialized for tasks such as woodworking and hideworking. Both of these stone-tool shapes were invented in the Oldowan, but direct evidence for hideworking has not been found before about 400,000 years ago. Examination of microscopic use-wear on scrapers demonstrates they were used to prepare hides at that time at Hoxne in England.

The earliest known bone awls date to 84,000 to 72,000 years ago in South Africa, and their use-wear shows that they were probably used to pierce soft materials such as tanned leather. Bone awls were later made in the Aurignacian in Europe, west Asia and Russia, and in Tasmania during the Last Glacial Maximum. The earliest eyed sewing needles date to 43,000 to 28,500 years ago (probably at least 35,000 years ago) in southern Siberia, and were used across Paleolithic Eurasia and in North America. Paleolithic hunters are also known to have targeted fur-bearing animals such as wolves and arctic foxes in Europe, snow leopards in Central Asia, mole-rats in Africa, and red-necked wallabies in Tasmania.

As animal husbandry was introduced during the Neolithic, human communities had a steady source of hides. The oldest confirmed leather-tanning tools were found in ancient Sumer and date to approximately 5000 BCE. The oldest surviving piece of leather footwear is the Areni-1 shoe which was made in Armenia around 3500 BCE. Another (possibly older) piece of leather was found in Guitarrero Cave in northern Peru, dating to the Archaic period.

The first written references to leather are documented from Ancient Egypt around 1300 BCE. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of tanned and treated animal skins in Badarian and pre-dynastic Egyptian graves. Artistic depictions of leather-working appear in tombs as early as the Fifth Dynasty. The archaeological record of the Nile Valley provides examples of the development of methods of tanning and treating hides and skins which include drying, smoke- and salt-curing, and softening with fat, urine, dung, brain, and oils.