The Invention of the Trousers

[Laughter] [Music] their origins have long been forgotten yet everybody wears them trousers they enclose your hips butt thighs and knees 4.click dress one piece but who invented trousers when and where one might think they always existed at least for as long as humans roamed the colder regions of this world the invention of the trousers the man from the ice of the Earth's tall Alps should have worn trousers to keep warm five thousand three hundred years ago but no under his coat he wore leggings made of goat skin tied to a calfskin belt and a loincloth and what did men wear in other areas of the world five thousand to 2,000 years ago in the kingdom of Sumer a cloak and underneath a short skirt in Scandinavia a coat over a short garment in Greece a fringe skirt and also in Assyria a skirt 2,000 years ago the Roman Legionnaires fought in a tunic over naked legs the Roman soldiers wore tunics despite being aware of the existence of pants at least 2,500 years ago Greeks had seen the sku thien's in trousers the Persians knew of trousers from the Sarkar but the only preserved leg dresses from that time have been found in graves on the icy heights of the Altai mountains far to the north of the lands of the Persians or Greeks [Music] if not for ice sort or being waterlogged the quick decay of clothing and textiles in human burials will leave only bones our knowledge of the fashion of distant times and regions is mainly secondhand stemming from artwork and texts [Music] there is however one exceptional circumstance that has fostered the survival of ancient textiles in East and Central Asia in the Tarim basin the extremely dry climate has preserved garments and equipment for thousands of years a thousand piping manatees in floods young heights in 2003 excavations began at the young high site what was discovered when unearthing the graves was impressive because so much organic material was preserved due to aridity this man still had his complete outfit and his equipment beside him he held her whip handle in his right hand and next to his head the bridles of a horse hung from a wooden pegs plug of gained apparently the two orphaned man belonged like the out irons schoo thien's and Sarkar to the north asian horse riding peoples of roughly 2,500 years ago he is dressed in a poncho abroad and loot waist belt boots and bands his trousers however appear shockingly fashionable and modern almost as if he just took them off after a night of partying low-cut crotch narrow cut legs and worn out sections top baggy legs skinny cool how did the ancient dress makers create this look [Music] objects do not readily reveal the knowledge that their creator possessed reverse engineering is a strategy used by today's industries to extract information from a product analysts examine its structure and functionality then draw and reproduce it as a full-scale copy archaeologists try to do the same with ancient products however these scholars are confronted with an almost insurmountable obstacle which is unique to archaeological finds these artifacts cannot be damaged during analysis and must be preserved complete for public display in museums archaeologists must approach the artifacts like a crime scene and conduct a non-destructive forensic investigation to interpret how the crafts were produced an international team of archaeologists fashion designers geoscientists chemists and conservators are facing the challenge their research starts with a journey - - a fan only a 5500 kilometer beam line distance lies between Berlin and - a fan but the flight route takes them from Berlin to Frankfurt from Frankfurt to Beijing from Beijing to a room T adding up to 11,000 kilometres a distance covered in 24 hours travel continues by car for another 200 kilometres from a room G to true a fan passing the eastern spurs of the heavenly mountains in Chinese called Jian Xiong to a fan is a place of extremes temperatures may drop to minus 28 degrees Celsius in winter and rise to 50 degrees in summer the average precipitation is low roughly 16 millimetres of rain per year and the hot raindrops evaporate upon impact with the scorched ground for over a thousand years people were buried in this gravel desert here Chinese archaeologists discovered the two irfan man Santiago in 2003 we began to dig in yang hai and number the graves consecutively m1 m2 and so on this grave here was one of the first we found I mean in the museum's laboratory scientists together follow the course of the trouser seams count warp and weft threats measure lengths and widths the information is then recorded on data sheets under the microscope they see that the yarn consists of all fibers from sheep Oh archaeological research starts with the question of the age of the discovery how old is the yarn or when were the trousers tailored elapsed time can be measured in the lab for example using the radiocarbon dating method but will the tiny supports suffice for measurement it is really a miniscule sample it should contain at least one milligram of carbon to ensure a credible age determination no we need to ask our colleague first whether or not this will be enough Kaliyuga wagon dust beneath the carbon isotope dating takes about three months this means waiting the trousers were made from sheep's wool like all living creatures sheep take up the radioactive carbon isotopes c14 from their environment and store it in their bodies living organisms replace the decaying c14 the wool fibers that have been sheared off on no longer part of the animals life cycle the c14 isotopes start to decay and their abundance decreases over time after about 5,700 years only half of the isotopes are still present because this decay law is consistent physicists can measure how much c14 is left in the wall and calculate when it was sheared off the sheep radiocarbon dating cannot provide an exact year but the time range can be narrowed down to a fifty to a hundred year margin the dating was successful but the results surprised the team the Trufant trousers were manufactured between three thousand one hundred and two thousand nine hundred years ago if this is true then the trousers would be hundreds of years older than any other trousers previously known from the North Asian horse-riding people's to be certain this dating must be confirmed by corroborating the date with radiocarbon dates from the poncho and boot bands they should more or less be the same age indeed they are all of the turf and man's clothes are about three thousand years old as the shock of this discovery sets in the team becomes aware of the fact that they are not simply working on the oldest trousers in the Tarim basin but they have discovered the oldest known trousers in the world the scientists advanced into an unexplored area of clothing and fashion history the impressive antiquity was only the first discovery many more will follow with these trousers nothing is as they expected it to be [Music] are you logically archaeological finds of garments normally are presented lying flat on a display table or in a showcase when shown in exhibitions thereby they lose their three dimensionality and are no longer understandable in their original form only fashion designers have the imagination and skills to envision clothing three dimensionally specifically how the designs will function on a dynamic body in motion this is precisely what we aim to accomplish from the beginning of this project normally fashion designers do not belong on an archeological team but when garments have found that are so complex and complete you certainly leave them as allies Ulrika Beck is a fashion designer but most importantly a specialist on the construction of clothing she immediately recognizes that the true orphan trousers have an entirely different design than modern ones only after systematic calculation and repeated revision of the measured data by test models she succeeds in defining number shape and size of the parts however these were just calculations on paper whether her theoretical reconstruction actually works on the body or Rika had to test whether full-scale model first made from a neutral metal cloth this was the only way to determine how the parts were actually sewn together the most elaborate part was the crotch piece and the way it was applied [Music] it's vigorous will to crunch pieces fascinating because it connects both trouser legs in a manner that allows the wearer to move in it if you just sew up the legs you might be able to put on the trousers but there's no way you could walk freely that means the crotch piece is absolutely necessary to move in them we still have a crotch piece in our trousers today but you don't see it anymore because of the thousands of years of construction development today the crotch piece is much smaller and separated in parts which became elements of the legs there's balance the moon foot once I lit the most exciting moment was when our test person put on the model for the first time at first sight it was great while fitting the model worked better much better than we thought but while walking it was worse than we anticipated this was because there is too much fabric between the legs the trousers are made from three pieces of cloth two legs from waistband to scene and one crotch piece looking like a stepped cross they were assembled in the following way first the legs were folded vertically so that the folds slits and strings were facing outwards each leg was closed with a seam along the inside from the hem to the height of the crotch to create tubes the leg pieces were sewn together at the waist front and back and spread out to the science the folded crotch piece close the opening completely along the edges it was stitched tightly onto the leg pieces to close the one-piece leg dress when the pant legs like parallel the crotch piece folds so that its actual width can't be recognized at this point the team could have finished the results would have served for the final report and publication but there was one more detail of the trouble then that guy was a neighbor over there was one observation we could not explain the construction and design researcher looked thoroughly for it and the conservators check to everything with a magnifying glass but none of them found traces of cutting those three parts were not cut to size the trousers from young high were only one small part of our greater research project silk road fashion actually we wanted to finish this small part with the test model but now that a number of new questions had arisen we couldn't stop we have to find out how it would feel if this test model became a real model with authentic material which properties would it have when a person wore them and above all is it even possible to weave those pieces into a shape and tailor trousers from them Donna Rosa bond it's getting serious now to reproduce everything in a scientifically correct way further specialists must join the team first of all somebody who can weave textile designer mower halgren is willing to experiment on her looms she will try to create the three pieces of fabric with the same size shape and patterns as the three thousand-year-old originals the key question for me is what techniques and bindings were used in this fabric so that we know what tools we need yeah the main weave is a twill one zone is Keelan both are well known weaving techniques no problem the area around the knee however is different here a meander pattern in a twining technique interrupts the twill that is at least what the conservators belief arena your kena architect archaeologist and textile researcher from Moscow produces technical drawings from freehand sketches and photographs as templates for the Weaver in the meantime MOA tries to find suitable yarn as we having Ganz consider ghana George Cukor we examined many different types of yarn from various manufacturers but eventually we realized that no yarn was suitable for our purpose we needed strong single yarn but today they simply don't make this kind of yarn anymore their structure looks completely different single modern yarns are much weaker than the yarns back then so in the end we were left standing with empty hands on this picture you can see that industrial yarn is made from very loosely spun threads only by twining two single threads is some kind of stability obtained single yarns they wouldn't work on a loom only through reinforcement by twining what they work when looking at the ancient yarn you can see that the individual threads are highly twisted which results in greater durability because of that such a yawn works well on the noon who can support us Ian Botham Fugees yarn you first need to roll well this means now we even had to procure raw wool originally we couldn't imagine that we would have to go back in the construction process as far as the source of the material so we set out in search of sheep and for Shearer's who could take off their winter coats all those questions about Sheep and Wool quality were completely new to us luckily the colleagues from the Leibniz Institute for zoo and Wildlife Research led us on the right path quickly apart and here we see yarn from the trousers it consists of fine wool from a sheep the undercoat of a sheep constitutes the actual wall that most wild sheep black their coat mainly consists of the much stronger and thicker Godhead wool bearing sheep descend from a wild sheep species called mouflon which was distributed from Turkey to southern Iran about ten thousand years ago it was domesticated in the region of modern Anatolia the first woolly varieties of sheep are known to date to roughly 5000 years ago again in the near East at this new world producing sheep variety then spread over all of Eurasia by four thousand years ago from that time period archeologists have found their remains in Europe and also for the first time in China however when we say that woolly sheep were in China around that time and provided the yarn we shouldn't imagine them looking like our fluffy white merino sheep so popular today but instead like sheep with more coarse warm for example like scooter or Pomeranian she breathes in Europe since medieval times [Music] Scooter are small frugal sheep they are among the oldest domesticated sheep breeds and are on the Red List of Threatened farm animal breeds in the animal park are cavada and at the student farm Brandenburg the scientists get brown and white fleeces a bezoar snare would offer to produce yarn from the fleeces didn't go quite as smoothly as we'd hoped moer calculated that we need eight kilometers of yarn for the trousers who can spin eight kilometers of yarn finer than one millimeter yet tough enough that it will not tear on the loom spinning mills can do that of course but for them eight kilometers is not worth the effort of starting the machines we then asked hobby spinster says but for them eight kilometers was too much of a labor investment nobody wanted the job we didn't expect however that her Saviour was practically sitting next to us dendrochronologist Hoover hoist BER who is indispensable for age determinations of wood learned how to spin with a spinning wheel in his youth he finally helped his colleagues out of their troubles do you sconce canals if the wall is just as it comes from the sheep you can't repossess it just as neatly as the sheep was wearing it and above all it is still greasy so that it runs well with one hand you hold the dirty side and pull out to the clean side now you make with as much skill as possible along and even thread it's actually only a matter of patience each sheep is different and has specific qualities in its war buck wall is more coarse and longer especially amongst gooder mother sheep have much finer and softer war you feel it in the past threads were spun harder especially for weaving you need more closed threads that have a higher tear resistance and strength durability increases and the thread becomes tougher and more abrasion now mower begins to test the different weave types [Music] [Music] [Music] the sips ina did this is one of the first samples I wove with the yarn from Eva it's a 12 weave which you can recognize by the distinct diagonals that are characteristic of this type of binding you can also see that it's very sturdy and at the same time elastic the interesting thing is that today we also frequently make trousers with this binding like the classical denim jeans we all wear which are woven in twill those are also very sturdy and elastic first a bit on glass at a time they a that I visited [Music] in this twill weave the pattern repeat the smallest element creating the pattern consists of four warp and four weft threads to make it for header rods are used to lift four different groups of warp threads by lifting the head of rod our so-called shed opens through this shed the weft thread runs from one side to the other the weft thread covers the warp threads which are not raised and remain below those caught up by the head of rod at the height of the crotch the color of the fabric changes the Weaver 3,000 years ago could have simply used a white weft thread instead of a brown that would have been fast and easy but she didn't she wanted light and darks their pyramids to interlock so she alternated the colors in killing technique the third type of binding is much more time-consuming it is the most important discovery of the textile production technique why this was described by the conservators as being a plain twining techniques vien bender as i necessarily realistic plain twining was used in prehistoric Europe for making nets and bags with plant fibres for example but see had a dagger sheath made from twined line vast stone saw I then tried it like this but the result did not match the original it can't be plain twining but in sense some kind of improved form looking at the original you see that the pattern on the front side of the fabric also occurs on the reverse and my first sample shows a completely different picture on the reverse after that side chuckling and I look for examples of this technique for a long time and finally I found it in New Zealand where this technique is still known it's used for making plant fiber coats there it's called tannic oh it resembles twining but it's much more complex than the classical plain twining with this special technique you can create large-scale patterned fabrics without using complicated weaving instruments in the Talackova technique two different colored threads are used in parallel one thread forms the pattern the other runs along the reverse they do not only twist around the warp threads but also around each other between every second warp thread this step fixes the threads on the reverse so that they don't hang loose and the fabric becomes stable - samosas pattern zone at the Myint an eco technique is special and exciting because it represents a fusion of old and new techniques Tala Co is the old slow twining technique made using only the hands but above and below is the neutral we've made using the devices of the Loom killer that's worked [Music] or tests confirmed the fabric of the Torah fan trousers combined four types of binding techniques elastic twill stabled Tanika color change in killing and tear proof rep weave for the trousers waistband the cloth maker 3000 years ago mastered them all and strategically applied them to optimize the look and the fit of the trousers on the body as in all forensic cases the central question remains to be answered why what motive did the tour fan dressmakers have to create trousers your word in fact we wanted to answer the question worth of people in turin really the first who had the idea to make trousers we searched for predecessors for finds that are older than the turf and man and the trousers in Tiffin itself we couldn't find any older discoveries the next ones that are older are the finds in she Ohio in the Tarim Basin and in the heart of the Taklamakan desert lies the symmetry of shower here the clothing fashions from the centuries before the cheerful man are preserved in a huge sand dune so is anyone in this cemetery wearing trousers you have in fact there are no trousers and Shia instead men and women wear skirts made of cords they were wrapped in woolen blankets or cloaks soft fleece caps on their heads and short leather boots on their feet they didn't have any other garments the people of Shia huh could process wall and they mastered simple weaving techniques besides they were skilled at braiding techniques plain twining with multicolored plant fibers is visible on their pouches [Music] the cemetery of Xiao ha is a striking paradox what we see our boat coffins in the middle of the desert the deceased lie underturned boats on a giant Sun June they were placed in the sand and then covered by the boats today you only see sand all around them wasn't white feathers of water birds cling to scepters and flatten goose quills formed the teeth of wooden masks everything indicates a life in marshes and lakes one coffin is different from the others it is completely plastered with clay this clay contains tiny plant remains the age of which was determined to be four thousand years ago a thousand years older than that orphan then microscopic pollen grains are also among the plant remains these deposits are climatic archives from which scientists can tell the weather forecasts of the past we are all familiar with pollen it originates from flowering plants pollen grains are tiny containers in which the male reproductive cells are carried by wind insects or birds to the female receptive organs of the same plant species many end up in lakes and are deposited in the sediments at the bottom every year in the flowering season a new layer of pollen accumulates pollen grains have a very durable cell wall so they last millions of years in the sediments scientists pull a sediment core out of the lake floor extract the pollen from the samples and determine their age palynology stolen researchers determine which plant the pollen came from based on its shape and therefore determine when specific plants grew in a certain region this means if you understand the pollen data you know the plants of past times if you know the plants you can deduce the climate and local environment of that time Indian few thousand yen is 4,000 year old clay sample we did not find many pollen grains also a new Keith Nieto leaked via via the vegetation was not as dense as we know it in Europe however we could tell that 50 percent of the plants were from wet environments grasses sedges and Reed plants that often grow on the shores of lakes and rivers the other half were typical desert plants like Kino pods Athiya and Artemisia it was the limp but we also found in the clay are tiny shells of sea trip pollen and sea trim together indicate that the sample comes from a nearby river or lake surrounded by desert the best-known lake in this area Islam norm which was fed by the Turin River and it's tributaries other climate archives confirmed that environmental changes between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago were particularly dramatic at first water flows from the mountains into the basin and accumulates in lakes along the rivers the ancient farmers grazed cows and sheep they grew wheat barley and 2 varieties of minute and they hunted waterfowl gradually melt water and rains decreased the desert shoved the inhabitants of the Oasis towards the mountains they were forced to find other habitats and adapt their life to new environments there they likely met people coming from the West with domesticated horses to cross wide regions with sheep goats and horses still done today requires strength riding makes it easier but higher mobility has its price it claims the health of the herders and leaves traces traces in the bones of riders on skeletons of the two orphan man's contemporaries from the western end of the tian shan mountains from kazakhstan the paleo pathologist Giulia gretzky diagnoses mechanical overload for example on this thigh bone of a 1.8 meter tall man here we see the attachment site of abductor muscles this area is relatively smooth as it should be but here are tuberculin areas and a prominent Ridge in this area the muscles along the inner side of the thighs are attached which are the muscles you use when riding because you have to keep the legs close to the horse muscle pool causes the sites where the muscles and bone attached to become reinforced bone is built up as the bone reacts to permanent or short but intense pull more pull causes the build up of more bone material strong arthritis already at an age between 30 and 50 from the cervical vertebra to the lumbar spine and fracture of the vertebral bodies this is the fifth thoracic vertebra which is strikingly reduced in height compared to the others we can imagine that during riding and when the rider falls off the spine is compressed the upper and the lower vertebrae scrunched the one in the middle we see those cracks here but the edges are not sharp instead they are rounded the body had time to repair it meaning the man did survive this injury for a long time [Music] not all of them were nomads or herders the Torah fan depression was a refuge in which farmers could settle down the monster diversity of people with different economic pursuits healed was water and space enough for gardens houses and temples the most recent temples were built here in the early Middle Ages there remains now belonging to the world cultural heritage of the Silk Road in this area the turf and man lived we know he was accustomed to riding horses because he was buried with a bridle and a whip he had a battle-axe so he was one of the Warriors who stood against predatory invaders and went to battle his service for the community was rewarded with the invention of a protection for his body on the horse riding without trousers is possible but with trousers you can more comfortably ride for longer distances and more effectively fight determining who is victorious and who survives and this is how the trousers were made first share brown and white sheep from the walls spin a fine yet strong yawn [Music] mount brown yarn as a walk thread in a loom weave twill with brown wet thread flexible and sturdy alternately grade the pattern parts especially at the knee impressive and stable on the belly changed to a white color at the transition weave step pyramids in killing technique leave side slits during weaving for putting on and taking off the pants just add a few centimeters of rep weave as a waistband when the cloth is removed from the loom braid the ends of the warp threads to finish add cords at the side slits for closing as a crotch piece and firm seat weave a stepped cross so the three pieces together with the same brown and white thread embellish the scenes with plated strings finished this replica is proof the trousers were custom-made without cutting there is no waist they achieved 100% material capacity from the onset the textile masters did not have a two-dimensional fabric in mind but three-dimensional trousers they built it around the body and considered a high strain at different parts highly durable yarn made the trousers long lasting in order to test how the trousers were worn together with the other garments they have also been reproduced as close to the original as possible the leather boots the bands over the boot shafts poncho and belt each piece another research topic another story [Music] when they are tested with a horse they harmonize ideally [Music] [Music] mounted warriors spread the trousers across eurasia they were particularly popular among the steppe peoples and horse breeders in the north gradually the great empires in the south adopted cavalry as a mode of battle and with it they took to wearing trousers the ancient persian empire of the army needs your r2 and new assyria through the sku thien's and persians trousers arrived in Greece at the same time the Chinese set up the first mounted armies for 2,500 years Europeans and Asian's knew of the for clay dress but they did not get accustomed to it for a long time some never did clever designs and new materials made the trousers comfortable clothing for all people and occasions the trousers we wear to this day are reminders of the highly-skilled textile and garment makers and professional horse riders of 3,000 years ago their stories should not be forgotten like wheel and bread trousers are among the great inventions that are universally usable and adaptable to explore their origin increases our knowledge and enriches our global cultural heritage [Music] [Music] you you you

Channel: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut

Views: 395,539

Keywords: excavation, mummy, fashion, design, climate change, central Asia, China, reverse engineering, radiocarbon dating method, wool, sheep, textile, Skudde, twill, kilim, taniko, twining, weaving, loom, Turfan, Yanghai, Xinjiang, horse rider, breeches, pants, palynology, desert, Taklamakan, ice man, Ötztal, gy, archaeology

Id: Pl7siWwzibs

Length: 45min 10sec (2710 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Txannie1475]

I did not expect to stay up after midnight watching a video about pants. But, I was happy to do it. Good video. Thanks for sharing.

[u/OryxTempel]

This was so fascinating! Thanks for the link!

[u/wmblathers]

I read about these a few months ago. It's interesting that already so early certain patterns that are easy and stable to weave — in particular stacked triangles — feature heavily (see the border between the legs and the upper part).

[u/Happyskrappy]

I haven't yet watched the video. I see that it's about 40 minutes long. However, I have listened to the Every Little Thing podcast episode called When Did Pants Become A Thing (You can listen here) that's about 20 minutes. It was super fascinating.