40,000 year old eyed sewing needles

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/08/science/eyed-needles-fashion-prehistoric-clothing-scn/index.html
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp2887
It looks like eyed sewing needles were invented around 40,000 years ago (deep into the ice age) in Asia.  The authors speculate that the invention may signify two major developments: "The emergence of underwear in layered garment assemblages, and/or a transition in adornment from body modification to decorating clothing."  They do not explain what they mean by "underwear" but cite a previous paper by one of the authors from 2010 that is paywalled, with no description in the abstract.  The fact is that sewing hides together and adorning such clothing does not require eyed needles as the authors do concede in the paper.  Eyed needles just make sewing less of a pain in the butt (you don't have to keep filling the knotched needle or forcing the "thread" through the holes that you make with an awl, but the time limiting step is likely still punching the initial holes in the hide or shell or other adornment with the awl.
The authors seem to miss an obvious factor for why eyed needles are better than knotched needles to get the "thread" through in sewing clothing.  Eyed needles are pretty much required for sewing cloth made of fibers.  The simple knotched needle would catch and fray the fiberous cloth, but the eyed needle would allow efficient sewing of fiberous cloth.  This just means that the invention would have been required if humans had started to make woven fabric out of animal hair or plant material.  Utzi had an insulating layer of plant fiber under his leather clothing.  My take is that the eyed needle may signal the start of weaving, and sewing together woven cloth.  It may have been thick and rough blanket like material, and you would need eyed needles to sew it together to make fitted clothing.  The undercoat of a wooly mammoth is supposed to be very fine and soft and would have probably made kashmir type yarn.  The mammoth skin may have been too heavy to use for clothing, but scraping off the hair would have produced a lot of yarn.
Ron Okimoto