The pants were found in China's Tarim Basin, were likely worn by riders

Jun 4, 2014 06:45 GMT  ·  By

Researchers writing in a recent issue of the journal Quaternary International announce the discovery of two pairs of pants which might just be the world's oldest clothing items of this kind.

Information shared with the public says that the trousers, one pair of which is featured in the photo above, were discovered in China's Tarim Basin at the site of an ancient graveyard known as Yanghai.

The Yanghai graveyard is a fairly large burial ground, meaning that, until now, the remains of well over 500 individuals have been discovered at this site, Phys Org informs.

Among these remains were the bodies of two men who had been buried dressed with the pants now argued to represent the earliest known instance of trousers-wearing, specialists explain in the journal Quaternary International.

With the help of carbon dating, i.e. a dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 to estimate the age of organic materials, it has been established that the pants that these two men were buried in are about 3,000 years old.

By the looks of it, whoever made these pants thousands of years ago used just three pieces of material to create them. Of these three pieces, two serves to make the trousers' legs, and the third one was used to make the bottom.

Interestingly enough, the two pairs of pants were both accompanied by a belt made of strings and also displayed fairly complex stitching patterns of each of the legs. This indicates that whoever made them and whoever worn them were interested in aesthetics.

Based on other items recovered from the burial site of the two adult men to whom these pants most likely belonged to, it has been concluded that the trousers were first and foremost used by riders who had to travel over considerable distances by horse.

The two men were found to have been laid to rest together with a wooden carving of a horse, a whip, a bow, and a battle axe. Hence, it is believed that they were riders who used to spend a lot of time traveling and who wore pants quite often due to the fact that robes and tunics do not make a proper riding attire.

“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,” researcher Victor Mair with the University of Pennsylvania in the United States says, as cited by Daily Mail.