Earliest pants worn by horse riders

摘要

Two men whose remains were excavated from tombs in 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. With straight-fitting legs and a wide crotch, the wool trousers resemble modern riding pants, says a team led by Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. The discoveries, uncovered in the Yanghai graveyard in western China's Tarim Basin, support previous work suggesting that nomadic herders invented pants to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement for horseback journeys and mounted warfare, the scientists report May 22 in Quaternary International.