The world’s oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel

With the help of an expert weaver, archaeologists have untangled the design secrets behind the world's oldest pants. The wool trousers were found in Western China and belonged to a man who was buried between 1000 and 1200 BCE. To make them, ancient weavers combined four different techniques to create a garment that was specially engineered for fighting on horseback, with flexibility in some places and strength in others.

The softer side of materials science

Most of us don't think about pants at all, except for the fact that we have to put them on in the morning. trousers were a technological breakthrough. Mounted herders and warriors need leg coverings that are flexible enough to allow them to swing a leg across a horse without feeling restricted. They needed to reinforce the knees at the same time. It became a materials-science problem. Where do you want it to be elastic and where do you want it strong? How do you make fabric that can accomplish both?

The makers of the world's oldest pants, which were produced in China around 3000 years ago, decided to use different weaving techniques to make fabric with different properties.

The world's oldest-known pants were part of the burial outfit of a warrior. He wore a poncho that was belted around the waist, ankle-high boots, and a wool headband adorned with bronze discs. The basic design of the pants is strikingly similar to the pants most of us wear today, but closer inspection reveals the level of engineering that went into designing them.

The 3,000-year-old trousers were examined in detail by Mayke and her colleagues. A replica of the pants was created by a modern weaver to better understand the techniques used to make them.

Roomy where it counts

If you've ever put on a pair of jeans, you'll know that most of the pants are woven in a type of fabric called twill. The oldest known fabric is from the Hallstatt salt mine in Austria, and it has been dated to between 3,500 and 3,200 years ago. T Will makes a heavy ribbed fabric that is stretchier than the original wool thread.

The battle-axe, bridle, and horse bit, which were found in his grave, suggest that Turfan Man spent a lot of his time fighting on horseback, so that stretchy twill fabric would have saved him the embarrassment of ripping his pants every time he swung into a horse. The crotch piece of the pants was wider at the center than at the ends to give the wearer more flexibility.