Leather is a widely used material from ancient times. Many things in the ancient and medieval worlds were made out of leather. People made belts and shoes out of leather as we do today. They also made leather jackets and protective aprons and hats and sometimes pants out of leather. They used leather straps to carry boxes and bags.There are a lot of ways of making leather.
For making leather you could use the skin of any animals but cows are used most often because the thickness of the skin makes the strongest leather. Once an animal has been slaughtered, it is skinned. The skin is given to a professional leather maker, or tanner, and they process the hide. The skin must then be prepared to be made into leather. Preparatory stages may consist of: bating, soaking, deliming, splitting, pickling, depickling, unhairing, liming, reliming, bleaching, preservation, frizzing, and fleshing.
Although leather manufacturing was once a highly polluting industry tanneries of today recycle the chemicals used in the process which keeps them from dumping into the environment. Tanning still produces foul odors but is more socially acceptable not that it has tried to be more environmentally friendly in its business practices.

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