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September 1, 2014

On the World’s Oldest Trousers

But now it appears that an even older pair of trousers — some two thousand nine hundred and forty-eight years older — has come to light.

According to a paper in Quarternary International, the garment was unearthed by a team of scientists excavating the tombs in an ancient burial ground, the Yanghai graveyard, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of western China. This vast cemetery, which covers an area of two square miles, was discovered in the nineteen-seventies by local villagers. It lies on the fringes of the Taklamakan desert, close to the Turfan oasis, in the Tarim Basin, a stopping place for nomads of the Bronze Age and, later, for the caravans of the Silk Route. The extreme dryness of the climate preserved the bodies and their grave goods to a remarkable degree, including perishable items like clothing and food. In one tomb, there was a basket of fruit and leaves near the mummy of a presumed shaman and, next to his head, a stash of cannabis that was still green.

- - The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at September 1, 2014 8:07 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

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