Do these 3,000-year-old trousers make my butt look big?
A pair excavated from tombs in Yanghai, China are the oldest known pants in the world, according to Science News. They were worn by nomadic horsemen between 3,300 and 3,000 years ago, a new study published on May 22 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, the scientists report May 22 in Quaternary International.
Early Europeans and Asians usually wore gowns, Kotaku reports. But horseback riders started wearing pants that were more comfortable between 3,400 and 4,000 years ago.
And these trousers are ahead of their time. Their patterns are more intricate than the burgundy pants found on the 2,600-year-old “Cherchen Man” mummy, that’s for sure. Go home, Cherchen Man, you can’t get into this club anymore. Get with the times.
(Photos released by the German Archaeological Institute)
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