Who

Invented
Trousers?
Gender equality may have
been advanced centuries
ago when both men and
women of certain cultures
wore pants.
By Adrienne Mayor

The British Museum

Greek alabastron, a pottery vessel circa

470 bc, depicts a female warrior wearing
highly functional trousers.
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mazons, the women warriors who fought Hercules and other mythic Greek heroes, were long assumed to be imaginary. The surviving myth that
they removed one breast for better archery aim was
false, but Amazon-like women were real. Archaeological discoveries in the 1980s of battle-scarred
female skeletons buried with weapons helped to prove that
warlike women really did exist among nomads of the Scythian steppes of Eurasia. The Greeks understood this long before modern archaeology, and more than a thousand warrior
women are depicted on Greek vase paintings. Notably, most
of the women are clad in tunics and trousers, or leggings, like
those worn by male Scythians. Standard male Greek attire at
the time was a rectangle of cloth draped and fastened with
pins and a belt, a chiton, similar to that of many other ancient
culturessuch as the Roman toga, Egyptian shenti or wraparound skirt, and Asian sarong. Trousers were more complex.

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Trousers and tunics required piecing together wool,

leather, or cloth, and sewing strong seamsfrequently
decorated with contrasting threadto construct wellshaped garments. The earliest preserved trousers have
been excavated in burials of horse-riding men and women in the Tarim Basin, dating to 1200 to 900 bc. The
most recent discoveries are two pairs of trousers fashioned more than three thousand years ago from three
pieces of wool with complicated zigzag and other woven patterns, featuring an inset crotch gusset for freer
movement. The design was an innovation that facilitated
riding on horseback. In other words, trousers were the
worlds first tailored clothing. Trousers did not just
happen, but had to be invented.

ooking to the ancient Greeks for clues, we find that

their writing and artwork implicate powerful barbarian women as the inventors of trousers. The
ancient Greeks considered proper attire for men
to be the short, draped, sleeveless chiton; women wore
layers of similar garments, but ankle-length. Arms and
mens legs were bare; cloaks and capes provided warmth
in mild Mediterranean winters. In contrast, snug or loose
trousersanaxyrides and sarabara (Greek words of probable Persian origins)and long sleeves were the mode
of dress favored by people ranging from the Black Sea
to the territories of the Xiongnu nomads on the western border of China. By 600 bc, in Greek art, trousers
had become emblematic of foreign archersespecially

Scythians, Persians, and Amazons. Greek writers described Scythians, Saka, Sarmatians, Dacians, Getae,
Celts, Siginni, Medes, Persians, Phrygians, Parthians,
Hyrcanians, Baktrians, Armeniansand Amazonsas
clothed in anaxyrides. The Greeks were literally surrounded by trouser-wearing peoples.
What did all these trousered folk have in common?
They were horse people par excellence, andno coincidencemany of these groups were also distinguished
by relative gender equality, compared to the Greeks. The
nomads, reported Hippocrates, always wear trousers and
spend all their time on horseback. Leg and seat coverings are essential for seriousall-day, day in and day
outhorseback riding, to prevent chafing. By the later
Roman era, descendants of Greek colonists on the chilly
northern Black Sea coast had adopted Scythian trousers,
and Roman soldiers adopted the breeches of Gallia Bracata (Trousered Gaul) in northern Europe. But in his
essential manual on horsemanship, Xenophon, who was
personally familiar with Persian riding clothes, did not advise Greek riders to wear trousers. Instead, Xenophon says
that upon straddling his horse a rider should rearrange
his skirts or mantle under his buttocks. For the classical Greeks the very idea of trousers evoked anxiety and
ambivalencethey were just too foreign. Even Alexander the Great, who irritated his soldiers by enthusiastically
adopting Persian-style dress after his conquests, never took
up trousers. The Greeks derided the barbarians trousers as
effeminate, a sign of weakness, mocking them as ridicu-

Michele Angel

Nomadic cultures
from Eurasia to
China, spanning
500 bc to 500 ad

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Li Gonglin

lous multicolored bags or sacks

(thulakoi) for the lower limbs.
Nevertheless, many ancient
Greek descriptions of barbarians
leather trousers also portray the
wearers as tough and masculine.
Several Greek writers described the practice of covering
up arms and legs, normally left
naked in the warm Mediterranean climate, as somehow unseemly. Civilized Greeks appreciated athletic nudity, while the
primitive barbarians concealed
their bodies. Moreover, the gaudy, colorful patterns and rough
textures of Amazon and Scythian leggings and trousers clashed
with elegantly draped Greek garments. But perhaps even more
worrying was the fact that males
and females often wore exactly
the same costume: hat, tunic,
belt, boots, and trousers. Many
features of this unisex outfit disquieted the Greeks. First, it signified that the two sexes behaved
the same way and engaged in the
same physical activities. Like the
horse, trousers were equalizers,
permitting women to move freely and be as athletically active as
men while preserving modesty,
as bloomers did for nineteenthcentury female bicyclists. (The
200-year-old French ban forbidding a woman to wear trousers
in public, unless she was riding
a bicycle or a horse, was lifted
in 2013.) Trousers also allowed
wearers to control visualand
sexualaccess to their bodies in
a way that skirts worn by Greek
men and women did not. This may be one reason trousers
have appealed to independent women and confounded repressive men in various cultures over the ages.
Next, the belief that women had invented the ensemble of tunic and trousers made the outfit unsuitable
for real (Greek) men. Greek males firmly rejected the
idea of covering their own lower bodies with trousers.
Compared to skirts, trousers may have been perceived
as inhibiting natural functions. Moreover, Greek men
were accustomed to glimpsing male genitals exposed by
miniskirted chitons in daily life (undergarments were
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not worn). Finally, for Greek men the most anxietyproducing feature of trousers was probably the garments
androgynous nature. It was damnably difficult to know
whether someone in trousers was a man or a woman.

et many vase painters devoted considerable effort to

depicting Amazon attire. The detailed portrayal of
Amazon-Scythian fashions suggests keen curiosity
about and awareness of the wardrobes of these foreigners. The attractive, sometimes sexually charged images of Amazons astride horses and leaping and whirling

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Twelfth-century scroll from the Song dynasty shows Chinese horsewomen riding alongside men. Riding domesticated horses long
distances necessitated comfortable, often unisex, clothing.

in battle scenes appealed to Greek male and female vase

owners alike. The warrior womens beauty and freedom
of movement in their dashing actionwear, which followed
the contours of their limbs like a second skin, demonstrated how natural trousers were for physical activities revolving around horses and warfare. It is a fascinating fact
that in antiquity so many perfume flasks and other objects

used by Greek women were

decorated with images of audacious Amazons clad in trousers.
Archaeological discoveries of
well-preserved sets of clothing
confirm that real horsewomen
of ancient Scythian lands dressed
much as did those described in
Greek texts and illustrated in
Scythian and Greek artworks.
Nomads wearing tunics, trousers, and pointed caps appear in
numerous ancient gold reliefs, as
terra-cotta figures, and on vases
made in the northern Black Sea
region, as well as on artifacts depicting the daily life and horse
culture of Scythia. Trousers and
tunics fashioned from leather,
wool, hemp, flax, and silk have
been found in Scythian burials.
In some cases, inner layers of
wool or silk were worn under
heavier clothes of leather and
fur. Pieces of material of different sizes and thicknesses were
stitched with decorative seams.
Long, wide skirts have been
recovered from many womens
burials in Scythian lands. We
can assume that nomad women
on the steppes used the method
of hiking a long skirt between
their legs and securing it with
a belt to make a trouser-like
garment for riding and strenuous activities. A wide variety
of leather belts and buckles
found in Scythian burials confirm that the belts and baldrics
(over-the-shoulder belts) were
accurately depicted in Greek
vase paintings of Amazons. Archaeologists describe numerous broad belts with attachments, clasps, and hooks for carrying weapons and quivers, as well as narrow belts for pendants and light items
such as knives and whetstones. The tombs of armed
women also yield a great array of personal adornments
such as earrings, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, beads,
pins, animal teeth and claws, cowries (from the Indian
Ocean) and other fossil and replica shells, and leather
and gold appliqus. Notably, many Greek vase painters included feminine jewelryearrings, necklaces,
and braceletsin their illustrations of Amazons, even
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those shown in the thick of battle. Leopard and other

animal pelts were another accurate detail (first appearing on a black-figure vase of 575550 bc), since furs of
spotted wildcats, martens, and other animals are among
the grave goods of women (and men) of ancient Scythia.
Archaeological and literary evidence shows that the depictions of Amazon dress and equipment developed more
realistic details in classical art as the Greeks discovered
more about the lifestyles of real horsewomen and -men of
Eurasia. The changes demonstrate that Greek artists and
their audiences had access to information about nomad
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dress or had observed examples firsthand. The Greeks

soon came to understand that the mythic warrior women
they called Amazons were mounted archers dressed and
armed like contemporary nomads of the steppes.

Dharmadhyaksha

Statue in Maharashtra, India, features Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi going into battle against the British in 1857 with her sari tucked up for
easier riding.

ssociating warrior women with the invention of

trousers was not irrational on the part of the Greeks.
Trousers were a practical innovation of men and
women who domesticated horses on the steppes,
optimally designed for riding long distances and engaging in activities on horseback. As noted above, the earliest preserved trousers were part of the full wardrobes of
the desiccated mummies from the Tarim Basin (in northwest China), ca. 1200900 bc, along with fur-trimmed
coats with cuffs and wide skirts with colorful leggings

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Alice Manfield collection, State Library of Victoria

realized that his infantry was

of wrapped wool. In 1984
no match for the mounted
archaeologists
discovered
archers. He also saw that
an extraordinary pair of
long robes impeded his
trousers in a mass grave in
commanders on horseback.
Sampula (Xinjiang, China)
Wuling ordered his people
containing the jumbled skelto adopt the barbarians
etons of about 133 male and
uniform of trousers, boots,
female nomads killed in an
and fur caps and to practice
attack (third to first cenhorsemanship. But his offituries bc). The bones were
cers resisted. Acknowledgburied with textiles, tools,
ing that it might take genmirrors, and combs evincerations before his Chinese
ing far-reaching trade and
soldiers stopped laughing
plunder. Still encasing his
and accepted such strange
or her limb bones, one noand perverse attire, Wuling
mads trousers had been taiset the example by donning
lored from pieces of a fine
trousers himself to promote
ornamental wool tapestry
his reforms. Eventually it
woven with flowers, birds,
was the semi-barbarian state
griffins, and other designs.
of Qin (western China) that
One pants leg was decorated
fully adopted the winning
with a centaur blowing a sal- Glass lantern slide depicts Alice Manfield, an Australian naturalist
combination of Xiongnupinx (a war trumpet used by (1878-1960), who in atypical fashion for her generation wore wool
style cavalry and trousers,
Scythians and Amazons, as trousers for hiking.
conquered the nomads, and
depicted in Greek art). An
unified the Warring States (221 bc).
image of a beardless blue-eyed steppe warrior holding a
spear adorned the other pants leg. The archaeologists surOver time, as cavalry became more and more impormise that the large pictorial wall hanging had been looted
tant in warfare, trousers became prestigious attire for
during an assault on a western settlement, then cut up and
noble horsemen of the Roman Empire and for medisewn into garments.
eval European knights. The practicality and high social
The efficiency of trousers is vividly illustrated in Instatus of trousers spread to other males in the Western
dian accounts of the Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, the
world, and the strong historical correheroine of the 1857 Indian Rebellion against the British.
lation between horse riding and unisex
After her husband was killed, the rani immediately drew
nomad attire, once understood by the
the front of her sari between her legs and tucked it into
Greeks, was forgotten.
a belt to create loose trousers so that she could ride into
Reprinted from The Amazons: Lives and Legbattle. This style was called veeragacche, soldiers tuck
ends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
or heros girdle. The traditional saris of the Mahratta
(Princeton University Press, September
(Maratha) tribeswomen and others were worn kasata
2014). Copyright 2014 by Adrienne Mayor
style, tucked up at the back of the waist to create baggy
breeches, much like a mans dhoti. This style was said to
have originated long ago when the women were expert
Adrienne Mayor is a research scholar in
horsewomen and rode to war alongside men. Likewise,
Classics and in the Program in History
and Philosophy of Science and Technolwide skirts preserved in steppe nomad womens burials
ogy at Stanford University. A historian of
could easily be adjusted for riding.
ancient warfare and science, she investiAnother striking illustration of trousers as a crucial miligates knowledge of nature contained in
tary technology occurred in China during the Warring
prescientific myths and oral traditions,
States period (fifth through third centuries bc), when Chilooking for ancestors, alternatives, and
analogies to modern scientific methods.
nese rulers struggled against the powerful horse nomads of
Mayors book The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates,
Inner Asia known as the Xiongnu. These male (and female)
Romes Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press, 2009) won
mounted archers naturally wore pants, while the Chinese at
an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) in 2010 and was
that time wore robes. The Zhan Guo Ce (Chronicles of the
a 2009 National Book Award Finalist. Mayors research has been
Warring States) describes how King Wuling of the Zhao
featured on NPR and the BBC, the History Channel, and other
popular media.
State in northwest China (who ruled from 325299 bc)
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