What little rain that falls on a gravelly desert located in western China’s Tarim Basin evaporates as it hits the blistering turf. Here, in this parched wasteland, 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 deft combination of weaving techniques and decorative patterns — displaying influences from societies across Eurasia — yielded a pair of stylish yet durable trousers now recognized as the oldest such garment known in the world (SN: 5/30/14).
Now, an international team of archaeologists, fashion designers, geoscientists, chemists and conservators has untangled how those trousers were made and painstakingly created a modern replica. The vintage slacks weave a tale not only of textile innovation but also of how cultural practices fanned out 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 uttering 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.
He sported an outfit that consisted of the trousers, a poncho belted at the waist, one pair of braided 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 bridle, wooden horse bit and battle-ax that had been placed in his grave indicated he had been a horse-riding warrior.
photo of a model wearing a woven reproduction of Turfan Man’s outfit
A woven reproduction of Turfan Man’s outfit, worn here by a model, includes a belted poncho, pants with braided leg fasteners and boots.
M. WAGNER ET AL/ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN ASIA 2022
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.
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.
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