[HN Gopher] Ancient fashion: 3,200-year-old pants on Chinese mummy
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       Ancient fashion: 3,200-year-old pants on Chinese mummy
        
       Author : diodorus
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2023-09-14 00:51 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
        
       | WalterBright wrote:
       | "Previously, Europeans and Asians wore gowns, robes, tunics,
       | togas or -- as observed on the 5,300-year-old body of Otzi the
       | Iceman -- a three-piece combination of loincloth and individual
       | leggings."
       | 
       | Hmm. My learning from TV and movies is that ancient Greeks,
       | Romans and Vikings all wore leather bikinis.
        
       | bovermyer wrote:
       | The older I get and the more I read, the more I'm convinced we
       | peaked as a species a long, long time ago.
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | I recommend The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the
       | World by Virginia I. Postrel
       | 
       | She, and the acoup site make the point about the sheer cost of
       | labour to make thread, and the asymmetry in costs to produce
       | sufficient thread from either a staple or from a source of
       | filament like silk, compared to the rate of weaving which itself
       | is not exactly cheap labour.
       | 
       | Producing thread is probably the limiting factor in times past.
       | It's unavoidably time consuming before there are 'machines' -the
       | first machines are very likely to be the conical weights which
       | combine with a spindle to make a spinning device to allow faster
       | thread production, and finally the invention of the spinning
       | wheel.
       | 
       | There's over a kilometre of thread in a pair of trousers.
       | 
       | Women are portrayed as spinning back to greek vases and Egyptian
       | murals because it was a task which consumed as much of their
       | working day as possible, alongside other duties. For complex
       | thread production, Women could be paid more than unskilled men,
       | for this task. (They were typically underpaid compared to men for
       | almost all work)
        
         | ch4s3 wrote:
         | I really enjoyed that book!
         | 
         | This pair of pants actually looks fairly complicated. If you
         | look at the knees, they're a different patter of twill than the
         | upper and lower leg. This could possibly be made so that the
         | knee flexes more easily and is more durable. The seat
         | reinforcements are interesting as the article points out. You
         | commonly see a smaller version of this added to jeans worn by
         | people who commute on their bikes.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-14 23:01 UTC)