1,900-year-old Roman ‘battle spoils’ recovered from robbers in Jerusalem
Police in Jerusalem seized a hoard of stolen antiquities that date to a 1,900-year-old Jewish rebellion against the Romans. The cache had been dug up by tomb robbers from a tunnel complex.
Police in Jerusalem has seized a hoard of stolen antiquities in Jerusalem, including coins, incense burners and ceramics.
The hoard included hundreds of coins, incense burners and a number of ceramics with decorations on them, including a jug that has a carving of a reclining figure holding a jug of wine.
Researchers believe that during the Bar Kokhba revolt (A.D. 132-135), Jewish rebels captured the items from Roman soldiers and stored them in a tunnel complex where modern-day robbers found them, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement released on their Facebook page on Wednesday.
Inspectors from the Robbery Prevention Unit examine the artefacts seized in Jerusalem.
Police in Jerusalem has seized a hoard of stolen antiquities in Jerusalem, including coins, incense burners and ceramics.
During the Bar Kokhba revolt, Shimon Ben Kosva (also called Simon Bar-Kokhba or just Bar-Kokhba) led the Jews in a revolt against Roman rule.
The rebels initially captured a substantial amount of territory. However, the Romans counterattacked and gradually wiped out the rebels and killed many civilians.
The ancient writer Cassius Dio claimed that more than 500,000 Jewish men were killed in the revolts. Archaeologists have found numerous hideouts that the Jews used to hide goods or people from the Roman army.
Despite stealing the goods, the Jewish rebels may not have used many of the artefacts, because they had images that may have gone against Jewish religious beliefs.
“The Jewish fighters did not use them, since they are typical Roman cult artefacts and are decorated with figures and pagan symbols,” the Israel Antiquities Authority said in the statement.
Police officers found the artefacts after they stopped a car that was “driving in the wrong direction up a one-way street,” the statement said.
Inside the car, they found the artefacts, which researchers think the robbers stole during illegal excavations of a tunnel complex.
While the artefacts were seized in the Musrara neighbourhood of Jerusalem the precise location of the tunnel complex was not released.
Pendants from Holocaust victims found near gas chamber in Poland
Three pendants bearing the Hebrew prayer Shema Yisrael (“Hear O Israel”) have been excavated at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Thursday.
Two of the amulets depict Moses holding the Ten Commandments on the reverse side.
Researchers have been able to identify that the three pendants, all different from one another and made by hand, originated in Eastern Europe.
A pendant featuring Moses holding the Ten Commandments was found by the gas chambers located in Camp II at Sobibor.
One came from Lviv in Ukraine, and the other two from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The nearly decade-long excavations of the site — where approximately 250,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis between 1942 and 1943 — were directed by Wojciech Mazurek from Poland, Yoram Haimi from the IAI and Ivar Schute from the Netherlands, assisted by local residents.
“Little is known about the stories behind the pendants, which are heartbreaking,” Haimi said in a statement.
“It has been possible to identify a kind of tradition or fashion among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe with pendants that were inscribed with ‘Shema Yisrael’ on one side and a depiction of Moses and the tablets of the Law on the opposite side,” he said.
A figure of Moses and the Ten Commandments on a pendant that was found in the women’s barracks before they entered the gas chambers.
“But were they distributed in synagogues by local Jewish communities or possibly produced for individual orders? Research of the pendants is ongoing and we invite the public to provide us with details concerning them.”
One of the pendants was discovered in the remains of a building where Jews were undressed before being led to the gas chambers. Another, on which Latin numbers were inscribed, was uncovered in the area where victims were undressed in Camp II. A third was next to a mass grave.
“The personal and human aspect of the discovery of these pendants is chilling,” said Eli Eskozido, director of the IAA.
“They represent a thread running between generations of Jews – actually a thick thread, thousands of years old, of prayer and faith.”
A pendant was discovered in a women’s undressing area at Sobibor, where victims were forced to unclothe before entering the gas chambers.
The World’s Oldest Stash: Scientists Find 2,700-Year-Old Pot
Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.
A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.
They apparently were getting high too.
Lead author Ethan Russo told Discovery News that marijuana “is quite similar” to what’s grown today.
“We know from both the chemical analysis and genetics that it could produce THC (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, the main psychoactive chemical in the plant),” he explained, adding that no one could feel its effects today, due to decomposition over the millennia.
Russo served as a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany while conducting the study. He and his international team analyzed the cannabis, which was excavated at the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China.
It was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45.
“This individual was buried with an unusual number of high value, rare items,” Russo said, mentioning that the objects included a make-up bag, bridles, pots, archery equipment and a kongou harp. The researchers believe the individual was a shaman from the Gushi people, who spoke a now-extinct language called Tocharian that was similar to Celtic.
Scientists originally thought the plant material in the grave was coriander, but microscopic botanical analysis of the bowl contents, along with genetic testing, revealed that it was cannabis.
The size of seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their colour and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, which are less psychoactive, so Russo and his team believe there is little doubt as to why the cannabis was grown.
What is in question, however, is how the marijuana was administered, since no pipes or other objects associated with smoking were found in the grave.
“Perhaps it was ingested orally,” Russo said. “It might also have been fumigated, as the Scythian tribes to the north did subsequently.”
Although other cultures in the area used hemp to make various goods as early as 7,000 years ago, additional tomb finds indicate the Gushi fabricated their clothing from wool and made their rope out of reed fibres.
The scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it’s evident that the blue-eyed man was buried with a lot of it.
“As with other grave goods, it was traditional to place items needed for the afterlife in the tomb with the departed,” Russo said.
The ancient marijuana stash is now housed at Turpan Museum in China. In the future, Russo hopes to conduct further research at the Yanghai site, which has 2,000 other tombs
A Message From a Mysterious Ancient Culture in Siberia
On the right bank of the Askiz river, a unique archaeological site from the early first millennium C.E. has been found. It is associated with the enigmatic Tashtyk culture in ancient Siberia and for a change, it sheds light not only on how they died, but who they were.
The Tashtyks’ unusual funerary practices had already been described in numerous articles and research but we know little about how they lived before the evil day. Now at the new site dubbed Kazanovka 14, archaeologists have gained rare insight into their culture, their adaptations to the environment and their relationships in this “oasis” in southern Siberia.
The Askiz is a tributary of the Abakan River. It passes through the balmy Minusinsk Basin in the southern Siberian republic of Khakassia, where the previously unknown site was found during the field season of 2021.
The Minusinsk Basin is a territory bordered by mountains and forests, with abundant lakes, fertile land and the mildest climate in Siberia. One might call it an oasis of the steppe. The winter winds blow the snow away from the mountains, making the area a perfect place to keep sheep, who can roam freely. It is therefore little wonder that the Minusinsk hollow attracted semi-nomadic tribes and their flocks throughout history. Archaeologists over the years have uncovered sites of a number of cultures from the third millennia B.C.E. onward.
While performing construction works along the Mezhdurechensk–Tayshet railroad from 2019 to 2021, various sites from the Early Bronze Age to the later Middle Ages were discovered. These included burials of many cultures and settlements. One of the sites, called “Kazanovka 14,” was excavated in 2021.
The salvage excavation of Kazanovka 14 was carried out by Anton Vybornov of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS Novosibirsk, Russia, under the leadership of Timoshenko Alexey. It was here that the scholars found new evidence of how the Tashtyks lived their life, after finding the remains of a burned-down wooden structure, and a remarkable petroglyph – an engraved sandstone slab.
Kazanovka 14, to the right of the track
Excavating the Tashtyk site of Kazanovka 14
Their discoveries were reported in the journal of Problems of Archaeology, Ethnography, Anthropology of Siberia and Neighboring Territories. As Anton Vybornov told Haaretz, Kazanovka 14 was a Tashtyk seasonal camp, as indicated by characteristic finds known from the vast majority of burial grounds of which this “culture” is famous.
A little bit Scythian
The Tashtyk culture was common in the Khakassian Minusink basin, in southern Siberia, from almost 2,000 to about 1,600 years ago. But the culture is not easy to define, Vybornov says. In some ways, they seem to have carried on some Scythian traditions. In other ways, they evince Hunnic – Sarmatian types of cultures, mixed with local traditions known in the Basin. The Tashtyk culture is also considered to be a local southern Siberian phenomenon on which basis the later medieval Yenisei Kirgizian state would arise.
Weapons and artefacts found in Tashtyk context
One thing we can be sure about is their idiosyncratic and colourful burial practices.
Tashtyk funerary practices involved either cremation or inhumation. The remains were buried either in box graves dug into the ground and lined by wood, or massive crypt burial mounds. The ash and cremated bones were put inside a leather bag that was then stuffed with dry grass. The bag was arranged inside a leather-dressed dummy, and a mask was placed on the area of the face.
In the case of Inhumation, which was also common, the deceased was dressed in leather. Their heads were wrapped with shrouds, orin any case a cloth tissue, and a mask was placed on top.
Tashtyk burial masks
Illustration of a mask on a Tashtyk woman’s body
The masks were the most extraordinary feature of these burials. They were essentially portraits of the dead made using clay and plaster and embellished with red paint. On the forehead, a spiral was drawn, and the cheeks and chin were blushed with the paint as well.
Once the dummies or bodies had been prepared, they were placed in box graves or crypts, among grave goods, including pottery and metal vessels. The crypts were big, with a corridor leading inside. When its mortuary duty was finished, the crypt was sealed, burned, and covered, to stand for eternity overlooking the Basin. While we can say plenty about their way of death, as revealed by the abundance of Tashtyk burial sites and practices, we cannot say much about their way of life. Barely any Tashtyk settlements have been found, hence the importance of Kazanovka 14.
Just below the surface, three to 20 centimetres below the modern deposits, the archaeologists unearthed what seems to have been a seasonal campsite of this semi-nomads, who moved from winter to summer camps and practised farming throughout the years in this fertile land. In the southern part of the camp, they found a charred destruction layer that they believe came from a collapsed structure built of wooden sticks attached horizontally or vertically together. The excavators also detected holes in the ground in the area of the structure, indicating the placement of wooden posts that supported the walls and/or the ceiling.
Pottery vessels found in Kazanovka 14
There was also a hearth, and together with pottery vessels, bone and metal objects, and animal remains, there were several spots of burnt clay accumulations. This leads Anton to surmise that the structure might have been a potter’s workshop, a possibility worth considering even though the research is still basic and further analysis is required. Alternatively, the structure could have been a simple house, a hut, or even a yurt. It seems the site ceased to exist when the fire consumed the wooden structure and what was within, sealing the place for good – until it was uncovered by the expedition in 2021.
Kazanovka 14 not only sheds light on the Tashtyk way of life. It also opens a window to their artistic world and their perception of themselves and their surroundings. The fire might have burned down their house, but signs of the Tashtyks’ artistic spirit survived the conflagration long after their death. Among the ash and debris, the archaeologists found astragalus bones, which are animal ankle bones, with marks incised on them, including crosses, circles, and lines. These are familiar from other sites and might have been used as game pieces. A sense of spaceBut the most exciting discovery of the season was the engraved sandstone slab.
The sandstone slab in situ
The petroglyph
The depictions on the sandstone are divided into three panels. The lower has what seemed to be a stylistic representation of trees. The upper features three horizontal lines with smaller stripes in between. The middle panel was bordered by three vertical lines on each side with stripes in between, similar to the upper panel.
The panel’s centre is oddly empty, with some elements on the side and a semicircle in the middle. Despite its cryptic nature, Vybornov and his team were extremely excited by the find, a whisper left behind by these enigmatic people about themselves and their world, an unintentional message from the past. Learning about the finds and the burnt structure found in Kazanovka 14, and the petroglyphs on the slab, one wonders if it might show that very structure.
When asked about it, Vybornov said that it had been his first thought as well, but at this stage that remains pure speculation. Only further research and analysis of the material, and correlation to old and new finds hopefully to be made, can unveil what the message the Tashtykians wanted to deliver actually was.
Archaeologists find a 9,000-year-old shrine in the Jordan desert
A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists said Tuesday that it had found a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert.
This photo shows two carved standing stones at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert. A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists said Tuesday that it had found a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine.
The ritual complex was found in a Neolithic campsite near large structures known as “desert kites,” or mass traps that are believed to have been used to corral wild gazelles for slaughter.
Such traps consist of two or more long stone walls converging toward an enclosure and are found scattered across the deserts of the Middle East.
“The site is unique, first because of its preservation state,” said Jordanian archaeologist Wael Abu-Azziza, co-director of the project. “It’s 9,000 years old and everything was almost intact.”
Within the shrine were two carved standing stones bearing anthropomorphic figures, one accompanied by a representation of the “desert kite,” as well as an altar, hearth, marine shells and miniature model of the gazelle trap.
The researchers said in a statement that the shrine “sheds an entirely new light on the symbolism, artistic expression as well as the spiritual culture of these hitherto unknown Neolithic populations.”
The proximity of the site to the traps suggests the inhabitants were specialized hunters and that the traps were “the centre of their cultural, economic and even symbolic life in this marginal zone,” the statement said.
The team included archaeologists from Jordan’s Al Hussein Bin Talal University and the French Institute of the Near East. The site was excavated during the most recent digging season in 2021.
Taiwan finds 4,800-year-old fossil of mother cradling baby
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
Archaeologists in Taiwan have found a 4,800-year-old human fossil of a mother holding an infant child in her arms, museum officials said on Tuesday.
The 48 sets of remains unearthed in graves in the Taichung area are the earliest trace of human activity found in central Taiwan. The most striking discovery among them was the skeleton of a young mother looking down at a child cradled in her arms.
“When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked. Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands,” said Chu Whei-lee, a curator in the Anthropology Department at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science.
The excavation of the site began in May 2014 and took a year to complete. Carbon dating was used to determine the ages of the fossils, which included five children.
The Origins of the Mummified Mother and Baby
The scientific excavation began in 2014 and took about a year to complete.
A team of archaeologists led by Chu Whei-Lee of Taiwan’s National Museum of Science was working on a Neolithic site 6.2 miles (10 kilometres) inland from Taiwan’s western coast.
Today, that area is called Taichung City but the site itself has been dubbed An-ho. Experts believe shorelines have shifted over the years and that An-ho was once a coastal village.
Indeed, over 200 shark teeth have been found in the site’s dwellings, however, whether these teeth were practical, decorative, or spiritual is not known. The inhabitants of An-ho were most likely Dabenkeng people.
“The Dabenkeng people were the first farmers in Taiwan, who may have come from the south and southeast coasts of China about 5,000 years ago,” says Chengwha Tsang of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “This culture is the earliest Neolithic culture so far found in Taiwan.” Taiwanese Dabenkeng culture featured corded ware pottery and stone adzes.
While the Dabenkeng lasted until the 3rd millennium BC in Mainland China, Taiwanese Dabenkeng lasted only until around 4,500 BC.
Yet from Taiwan, the Dabenkeng spread across Southeast Asia and Oceania, bringing their culture and language with them.
“They were probably the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian language-speaking people living nowadays in Taiwan and on the islands of the Pacific,” said Tsang.
Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans
The kungas of Syro-Mesopotamia were ancient equines that roamed the region 4,500 years ago. Arriving long before domesticated horses did, the stocky horse-like animals were highly valued and used for pulling four-wheeled wagons into battle, reports James Gorman for the New York Times.
The elite used the highly-prized, donkey-like creatures for travel and warfare.
Having been depicted in mosaics and their value recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets, researchers suspected the prestigious kunga was a type of hybrid donkey. Still, their proper classification in the animal kingdom remained unknown until now.
A genetic analysis using ancient skeletal remains, genetic material from the last surviving Syrian wild ass, and an investigation of the evolutionary history of the genus Equus revealed that the kunga was the cross of a female donkey (Equus Africanus asinus) and a male Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus), reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo.
The find is the earliest human-made hybrid documented in the archaeological record and suggests that kungas were bred to be faster and more robust than donkeys and more manageable than wild asses, which are also called onagers or hemiones, per a French National Centre for Scientific Research statement. Scientists published details of the genetic analysis this month in Science Advances.
In the early 2000s, archaeologists first uncovered the kunga remains in a 4,500-year-old royal burial site, Umm el-Marra, located in Aleppo, Syria, reports Science’s Tess Joosse.
Dozens of equine skeletons that did not match the features of any known equine species were found buried next to royals. Study co-author Jill Weber, an archeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, suspected that the skeletons may have been kungas because marks on the teeth and patterns of wear suggested the animals were purposely fed instead of being left to graze and wore bit harnesses in their mouths, Tom Metcalfe reports for Live Science’s.
“From the skeletons, we knew they were equids [horse-like animals], but they did not fit the measurements of donkeys, and they did not fit the measurements of Syrian wild asses,” says study author Eva-Maria Geigl, a genomicist at the Institut Jacques Monod, to Live Science. “So they were somehow different, but it was not clear what the difference was.”
The Nineveh panel, Hunting Wild Asses (645-635 B.C.E.) from the British Museum in London. The art depicts ancient Mesopotamians capturing wild hemiones for breeding.
Harsh desert conditions poorly preserved DNA from the 25 skeletons obtained from the Umm el-Marra site, so researchers use advanced sequencing methods to compare the bits and pieces of DNA, Science reports.
Researchers then compared the results to an 11,000-year-old equid sample taken from the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site in Turkey and genetic material taken from a preserved museum specimen of the last surviving wild Syrian ass that went extinct in 1929, per Gizmodo.
Using Y-chromosome fragments, the team found that the kunga’s paternal lineage belonged to the Syrian wild ass and matched the species of the sample from Turkey. They also confirmed donkeys were the maternal lineage, Gizmodo reports.
According to a statement, the elite used the highly-prized, donkey-like creatures for travel and warfare. They may have been considered status symbols or exchanged as royal gifts. Ancient texts from the kingdom of Ebla and the Diyala region in Mesopotamia detail the prices of obtaining the hybrid animal, which cost six times the amount for a donkey, according to the study.
Other cuneiform texts also describe animal husbandry programs used to breed the kunga, Science reports.
Like other hybrids in the animal kingdom, such as the mule or the liger, the kunga was sterile. They had to be intentionally bred by mating a female donkey with a male wild ass, per Gizmodo. Because the strong-yet-stubborn male wild asses could run faster than donkeys, capturing these animals alone highlights the technical capabilities of the ancient Mesopotamian societies.
The breeder’s clear choice to use a female donkey also revealed the sophistication of the mating plan for combining different characteristics that these ancient societies found desirable. Since the mother was domesticated, it also would have been easier to keep her in captivity as the offspring were raised, Science reports.
“This is a great example that shows the level of organization and management techniques needed to keep these animals alive,” says zooarchaeologist Benjamin Arbuckle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved with the study, to Science. “It’s very much like modern zoo management.”
World’s Oldest Pants, Turfan Man’s Trousers, was Made through Three Weaving Techniques
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).
This pair of approximately 3,000-year-old pants, the oldest ever found, displays weaving techniques and decorative patterns that were influenced by cultures across Asia, researchers say.
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-axe 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 kilometres southeast of the Chinese city of Turfan.
A woven reproduction of Turfan Man’s outfit, worn here by a model, includes a belted poncho, pants with braided leg fasteners and boots.
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 don denim jeans and dress slacks that incorporate the design and production principles of the ancient Yanghai trousers.
In short, Turfan Man was the ultimate trendsetter.
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. A 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 yarn 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 a loom to weave 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 ensuing row so that a diagonal line forms.
A twill weave like that used to make the oldest known pants in the world is illustrated here. Horizontal weft threads pass over one and under two or more vertical warp threads, shifting slightly on each row to produce a diagonal pattern (dark gray).
Variations in the number and colour of weft threads in the twill weave on Turfan Man’s trousers were used to create pairs of brown stripes running up the off-white 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 britches.
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 tapestry 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 interlocking 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 cloaks 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 centre 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 snugly yet allowed the legs to clamp 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 favoured by Yanghai pants makers three millennia ago.
Ancient trousers (partly shown at bottom) from China’s Tarim Basin display twill weaving that was used to produce alternating brown and off-white diagonal lines at the tops of the legs (far left) and dark brown stripes on the crotch piece (second from left). Another technique for manipulating threads enabled artisans to create a geometric pattern at the knees (second from right) and zigzag stripes at the ankles (far right).
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 simultaneous 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 resembles 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).
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 mingling 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 intricate, 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 apparel, 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.
