Posted on 05/31/2014 6:44:58 AM PDT by blam
Bruce Bower
May 31, 2014, 7:14 AM
The oldest known trousers, including this roughly 3,000-year-old pair with woven leg decorations, belonged to nomadic horsemen in Central Asia.
Two men whose remains were recently excavated from tombs in western China put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. But these nomadic herders did so between 3,300 and 3,000 years ago, making their trousers the oldest known examples of this innovative apparel, a new study finds.
With straight-fitting legs and a wide crotch, the ancient wool trousers resemble modern riding pants, says a team led by archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. The discoveries, uncovered in the Yanghai graveyard in China's Tarim Basin, support previous work suggesting that nomadic herders in Central Asia invented pants to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement for horseback journeys and mounted warfare.
"This new paper definitely supports the idea that trousers were invented for horse riding by mobile pastoralists, and that trousers were brought to the Tarim Basin by horse-riding peoples," remarks linguist and China authority Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania.
Previously, Europeans and Asians wore gowns, robes, tunics, togas or — as observed on the 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman — a three-piece combination of loincloth and individual leggings.
A dry climate and hot summers helped preserve human corpses, clothing and other organic material in the Tarim Basin. More than 500 tombs have been excavated there since the early 1970s.
Earlier research on mummies from several Tarim Basin sites, led by Mair, identified a 2,600-year-old individual known as Cherchen Man who wore burgundy trousers probably made of wool. Trousers of Scythian nomads from West Asia date to roughly 2,500 years ago.
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I have a pair like that.
My wife is trying to get me to throw them out.
Because no one can remember them... Esalen Institute alumnus here...
I've read that humans were unable to survive in the deep steppes until horses were domesticated and used to haul the necessary survival supplies way into the steppes.
New version of the GBLTQ flag?
Ping!
When I lived in Alabama I met 2 brothers, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett Boone, they patched their pants and shirts with the skins off road kill.
Didn’t bother to tan the skins.
Now there was 2 people you definitely wanted to stay up- wind of.
Nomadic asians invented “going commando”!
Hmmm, that’s uber casual!
She looks like a bag of Skittles. Kids gotta have their candy...
Just another possible maker of pants.
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