The world’s oldest pants stitched together cultures from across Asia

Move over, Versace. These 3,000-year-old pants were stylish, functional and multicultural

What little rain that falls on a gravelly desert located in western China’s Tarim Basin evaporates as it hits the очень горячую землю. Here, in this засушливой пустоши, lie the ancient remains of people who made one of the biggest fashion splashes of all time.

Herders and horse riders who buried their dead in the Tarim Basin’s Yanghai graveyard pioneered pants making between roughly 3,200 and 3,000 years ago. Their искусная combination of weaving techniques and decorative patterns — displaying influences from societies across Eurasia — yielded a pair of stylish yet прочных, долговечных trousers now recognized as the oldest such предмет одежды known in the world (SN: 5/30/14).

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426.Blistering - очень горячий

427.Turf - земля, дёрн

428.Parched - засушливый, страдающий от засухи

429.Wasteland - пустошь, пустыня

430.Deft - искусный

431.Durable - прочный, долговечный

432.Garment - предмет одежды, одежда

@ege_multiple_choice

Now, an international team of archaeologists, fashion designers, geoscientists, chemists and conservators поняли, распутали how those trousers were made and кропотливо created a modern replica. The vintage широкие брюки weave a tale not only of textile innovation but also of how cultural practices распостранились, разветвились across Asia, the researchers report in the March Archaeological Research in Asia.

“A diversity of textile techniques and patterns of different local origins, traditions and times merged into something new in this garment,” says archaeologist and project director Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. “Eastern Central Asia was a laboratory where people, plants, animals, knowledge and experiences from different directions and sources came … and were transformed.”

Fashion icon

One man brought the pants to scientists’ attention without вымолвить, сказать a word. His naturally mummified body, as well as the preserved bodies of more than 500 others, was uncovered during excavations conducted by Chinese archaeologists since the early 1970s at the Yanghai cemetery.

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433.To untangle - распутывать, понимать

434.Painstakingly - тщательно, кропотливо

435.Slacks - широкие брюки (мужские или женские)

436.To fan out - разветвляться, распостраняться

437.To utter - произнести, вымолвить

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He щеголял an outfit that consisted of the trousers, a poncho belted at the waist, one pair of плетëных bands to fasten the trouser legs below the knees, another pair to fasten soft leather boots at the ankles and a wool headband with four bronze disks and two seashells sewn on it. A leather уздечкой, wooden horse bit and battle-ax that had been placed in his grave indicated he had been a horse-riding warrior.

Researchers now call him Turfan Man because the Yanghai site lies about 43 kilometers southeast of the Chinese city of Turfan.
Of all of Turfan Man’s garments, his trousers stood out as truly special.

Not only were they older by at least several centuries than any other examples of such gear, but the Yanghai pants also boasted a sophisticated, modern look. The pants feature two leg pieces that gradually widen at the top, connected by a crotch piece that widens and bunches in the middle to increase leg mobility.

Within a few hundred years, mobile groups across Eurasia began wearing pants like those at Yanghai, other archaeological finds have shown. Woven leg covers connected by a flexible crotch piece eased the strain of riding horses bareback over long distances. Not surprisingly, mounted armies debuted around that time.

Today, people everywhere носят denim jeans and dress slacks that incorporate the design and production principles of the ancient Yanghai trousers.

In short, Turfan Man was the ultimate законодателем мод.

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438.To sport - щеголять (чем-то)

439.Braided - плетёный

440.Bridle - уздечка

441.To don - носить, надевать

442.Trendsetter - законодатель моды

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Fancy pants

Despite being so fashion-forward, the ancient Yanghai horseman left researchers wondering how his remarkable pants had been made. No traces of cutting appeared on the fabric, so Wagner’s team suspected that the garment had been woven to fit its wearer.

Close examination of Turfan Man’s trousers revealed a combination of three weaving techniques, the scientists report in the new study. A re-created version of the find — fashioned by an expert weaver from the пряжи of coarse-wooled sheep similar to those whose wool was used by ancient Yanghai weavers — confirmed that observation.

Much of the garment consists of twill weave, a major innovation in the history of textiles.

Twill changes the character of woven wool from firm to elastic, providing enough “give” to let a person move freely in a pair of tight-fitting pants. The fabric is created by using rods on ткацком станке чтобы плести, ткать a pattern of parallel, diagonal lines.

Lengthwise warp threads are held in place so that a row of weft threads can be passed over and under them at regular intervals. The starting point of this weaving pattern shifts slightly to the right or left for each последующего row so that a diagonal line forms.

Variations in the number and color of weft threads in the twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers were used to create pairs of brown stripes running up the белого (с сероватым или желтоватым оттенком) crotch piece, the researchers found.

Textile archaeologist Karina Grömer of the Natural History Museum Vienna says she recognized twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers when she examined them around five years ago. Grömer had previously reported that pieces of woven fabric found in Austria’s Hallstatt salt mine, where such delicate textiles preserve well, displayed the oldest known twill weave.

Radiocarbon dating places the Hallstatt textiles between around 3,500 and 3,200 years old — roughly 200 years before Turfan man sported his штанами

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443.Yarn - пряжа

444.Loom - ткацкий станок

445.To weave - плести, ткать

446.Ensuing - последующий, следующий за

447.Off-white -  не совсем белый (с сероватым или желтоватым оттенком)

448.Britches - штаны

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People in Europe and Central Asia may have independently invented twill weaving, says Grömer, who did not participate in the new study. But at the Yanghai site, weavers combined twill with other weaving techniques and innovative designs to create high-quality riding pants.

“This is not a beginner’s item,” Grömer says. “It’s like the Rolls-Royce of trousers.”
Consider the ancient trousers’ knee sections. A technique now known as гобелен weaving produced a thicker, more protective fabric at these joints, the researchers found. A third weaving method was used on the upper border of the pants to create a thick waistband.

Other features of the trousers involved an unusual twining method, in which two differently colored weft threads were twisted around each other by hand and laced through warp threads, creating a decorative, geometric pattern across the knees that resembles соединяющиеся, сцепляющиеся T’s leaning to the side. The same twining method produced zigzag stripes at the trousers’ ankles and calves.

Wagner’s team could find only a few historical examples of such twining, including borders on плащах of the Maori people, an Indigenous group in New Zealand.

Yanghai artisans also showed their ingenuity in designing a formfitting crotch piece that was wider at its center than at its ends, Grömer says. Trousers dating to a few hundred years later than the Yanghai find, found in several parts of Asia, often consist of woven legs connected by square fabric crotch pieces that resulted in a less comfortable and flexible fit.

In tests with a man riding a horse bareback while wearing a re-created version of Turfan Man’s entire outfit, the trousers fit плотно, в обтяжку yet allowed the legs зажиматься, обхватывать firmly around the horse.

Today’s denim jeans are made from one piece of twill material following some of the same design principles as those favored by Yanghai pants makers three millennia ago.

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449.Tapestry - гобелен

450.To interlock - соединять, сцеплять, смывать

451.Cloak - плащ

452.Snugly - плотно, в обтяжку

453.To clamp - зажимать, обхватывать

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Clothes connections

Perhaps most striking, Turfan Man’s trousers tell a story of how ancient herding groups carried their cultural practices and knowledge across Asia, spreading seeds of innovation.
For instance, the interlocking T pattern decorating the ancient horseman’s pants at the knees appears on bronze vessels found in what’s now China from around the same time, roughly 3,300 years ago, Wagner’s team says.

The nearly одновременная adoption of this geometric form in Central and East Asia coincides with the arrival in those regions of herders from West Eurasian grasslands riding horses that they domesticated 4,200 years ago or more (SN: 10/20/21).
Pottery found at those horse riders’ home sites in western Siberia and Kazakhstan displays interlocking T’s as well. Any deeper meaning this pattern held aside from its artistic appeal remains unknown. But West Eurasian horse breeders probably spread the interlocking T design across much of ancient Asia, Wagner and her colleagues suspect.

Similarly, a stepped pyramid pattern woven into the Yanghai pants appears on pottery from Central Asia’s Petrovka culture, which dates to between around 3,900 and 3,750 years ago. The same pattern напоминает architectural designs that are more than 4,000 years old from western and southwestern Asian and Middle Eastern societies, including Mesopotamian stepped pyramids, the researchers say.

Tapestry weaving such as that observed on Turfan Man’s trousers also originated in those societies.
It’s no surprise that cultural influences from throughout Asia affected ancient people in the Tarim Basin, says anthropologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis. Yanghai people inhabited a region at a crossroads of seasonal migration routes followed by herding groups starting more than 4,000 years ago (SN: 3/8/17).

Those routes ran from the Altai Mountains in Central and East Asia to Southwest Asia where Iran is located today. Excavations at sites along those routes indicate that herders spread crops across much of Asia too (SN: 4/2/14).

Cultural transitions in the Tarim Basin may have started even earlier. Ancient DNA suggests that western Asian herders in oxen-pulled wagons moved through much of Europe and Asia around 5,000 years ago (SN: 11/15/17).

By around 2,000 years ago, herders’ migration paths formed part of a trade and travel network running from China to Europe that became known as the Silk Road. Cultural mixing and смешивание intensified as thousands of local routes throughout Eurasia formed a massive network.

Turfan Man’s multicultural riding pants show that even in the Silk Road’s early stages, migrating herders carried new ideas and practices to distant communities. “The Yanghai pants are an entry point for examining how the Silk Road transformed the world,” Frachetti says.

Looming questions

A more basic question concerns how exactly Yanghai clothes makers transformed yarn spun from sheep’s wool into Turfan Man’s trousers. Even after making a replica of those pants on a modern loom, Wagner’s team is unsure what an ancient Yanghai loom looked like. No remnants of those devices have been found.

The researchers suspect a loom constructed to be operated from a sitting position would have made it possible to create замысловатые, запутанные, twined patterns. Experiments with different weaving devices are the next step in untangling how Turfan Man’s trousers were made, Wagner says.
It’s clear, though, that the makers of these ancient pants blended several complex techniques into a revolutionary piece of одежды, says archaeologist and linguist Elizabeth Barber of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Barber has studied the origins and development of cloth and clothing in West Asia.

“We truly know so little about how clever the ancient weavers were,” Barber says.

Turfan Man may not have had time to ponder his clothes makers’ prowess. With a pair of pants like that, he was ready to ride.

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454.Simultaneous - одновременный

455.To resemble - напоминать (по внешнему виду или характеру)

456.To mingle - смешиваться

457.Intricate - запутанный, замысловатый

458.Apparel - одежда

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🕯 Article 24

#article

Fruit stickers are the бич of the compost pile

When everything else decays, those little plastic stickers remain

There they are again — in the контейнере для компоста, littered through the backyard pile, stuck in the sifter, peeping out of the garden beds — the eternal проклятие of many home gardeners: the small, вездесущие, and remarkably indestructible produce sticker.

“I painstakingly remove every produce sticker from every piece of fruit and veg that enters our home,” says James Hohman, a professor at the University of Connecticut. But his compost pile lives on top of a compost pile used by the previous owners of his house.

When Hohman’s family first moved in, he sifted the pile, removing “probably hundreds of stickers.” But more stickers kept showing up for years — in the куче and in the garden beds.

Joshua Simpson, who lives in Washington, knows his pain. “I have composted blue jeans well before those dumb stickers have gone away,” he says. His family also feeds their food scraps to their chickens, resulting in produce stickers “all over the yard.”

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460.Scourge - [skɜːʤ] - бич, бедствие

461.Compost caddy - контейнер для компоста

462.Bane - проклятие, отрава

463.Ubiquitous - вездесущий, повсеместный

464.Pile - куча

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“I have to put down the лопату and pick the stickers out by hand every other зачерпывание,” says Gretchen who constantly finds stickers in her compost pile at home in Colorado. “No gardener could sleep at night if they left them in the finished compost and spread them around the yard.”

Composting is about accelerating the decomposition of organic matter. Your кухонные отходы and обрезки газона are all going to rot eventually. But a compost pile gets it done faster and, ideally, with minimal smells — finished compost smells like forest floor — and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

The same anaerobic bacteria that make rotting garbage smell so bad also emit methane; home composting focuses on boosting aerobic decomposition, which is both more sustainable and less disgusting.

Home composting can be a fairly hands-off process, but the science behind it can turn this household chore into an optimization mini-game. On the subreddit r/composting, composters fuss over their nitrogen to carbon ratios and post pictures of the thermometers they’ve stuck into their piles. (A very hot pile is an achievement worth celebrating.)

For home composters, vegetable scraps and fruit peels are often a source of nitrogen, an integral part of the chemistry of a compost heap. Nitrogen feeds the microorganisms that break down the compost, generating heat in the process.

Too little nitrogen, and a pile will stay cold and will break down slowly. Too much, and it starts to smell very bad. Maintaining the balance between nitrogen and carbon is key to composting at home. (Other common nitrogen sources include grass clippings, used coffee grounds, and — for the open-minded home composter — urine).

Alas, the produce stickers ride alongside the nutrient-rich kitchen waste. They cling to a spent orange кожуре; they linger on a discarded banana peel; they’re brushed into the compost bucket with a pile of woody листовой капусты stems and carrot tops. It requires hypervigilance to prevent a produce sticker from entering a compost pile.

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