Why Do We Wear Pants? Horses.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/q-why-do-we-wear-pants-a-horses/259696/

by rosser • 14 years ago

123 41 14 years ago

doktrin3• 14 years ago

Interesting article. I'm perpetually fascinated by the causal chains that have influenced aspects of our lives that we otherwise entirely take for granted.

psykotic• 14 years ago

You'd enjoy watching James Burke's Connections.

johnbenwoo• 14 years ago

http://kottke.org/10/12/james-burkes-connections-online

barking• 14 years ago

The cold tap is generally on the right side of a sink. This is because cold taps were around long before hot taps and as most people are right-handed they were put on that side. At least that's what I was told (OK trivial example)

msutherl• 14 years ago

Why Do We Wear Pants? Bicycles.

mrslx• 14 years ago

Why do we read? Reading.

DrJ• 14 years ago

Why do we fall? Batman.

arohner• 14 years ago

Supposedly, high heeled shoes are also related to horses.

Men's boots were heeled to make stirrups more effective. Heels then became a status symbol, as in "I wear heeled shoes because I own a horse, and therefore I am rich". then the fashion jumped over to women's clothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_footwear#Precursors...

pkulak• 14 years ago

I'm sure looking taller, with longer legs and defined calf muscles has nothing to do with it. ;)

TheGateKeeper• 14 years ago

You're right, it had nothing to do with it. It was a side effect that was predominant in male fashion before it came to women's fashion.

keiferski• 14 years ago

Another interesting tidbit is that Brazilian clothing and swimwear tend to be more revealing than Euro-American clothing, because the medieval Brazilian man was a sparsely dressed native, whereas the medievel European man was outfitted in heavy armor.

At least, according to this: http://www.coolhunting.com/style/cool-hunting-vi-36.php (nsfw? Girls in bikinis)

jballanc• 14 years ago

Relevant Dinosaur Comics: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1908

It seems like this "treating history as a science" movement that started with Jared Diamond has really caught on...and I love it! Evolution is such a hugely important field for the future, and looking to the past is turning out to be a really fruitful way of learning more about it.

Another example I like: how do you determine when humans first started wearing clothing? Trace the timing of the genetic divergence of human hair lice and human body lice (lice require a hairy/furry material, so body lice can't thrive until humans wear clothes). More details: http://news.ufl.edu/2011/01/06/clothing-lice/

tokenadult• 14 years ago

An oversimplified view of human history from a commentator who has too little acquaintance with non-Western cultures. (Well, all right, I've long accepted the point, which I read somewhere else long before the Internet existed, that European dress shifted from robes to trousers in large part to accommodate horse riding.) But with cross-cultural perspective, we would consider the trousers (often in the form of "pajamas") worn by women in China and southeast Asia developed in cultures where peasant women certainly did not have opportunity to ride horses. Rather, in those places agricultural work in paddy fields made clothing that allowed a wide range of movement with modesty very helpful. There isn't one single human story about how trousers developed as a form of dress.

For those of you who like to learn about how study of human cultural behavior goes awry from too little exposure to non-Western cultures, see

Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan (2010). "The weirdest people in the world?" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33, 61–135

doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

http://humancond.org/_media/papers/weirdest_people.pdf

doktrin3• 14 years ago

While I think your point is highly valid, and interesting, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the OP or render the piece "crap".

You yourself acknowledge that male European dress shifted to trousers due to the influence of horses. It's also fairly reasonable to assert that many modern dress conventions are heavily influenced by European culture.

The OP may not have extensively covered the history of trousers, but it does a reasonable (albeit, short) job of describing why trousers are commonplace in modern society.

andrewflnr• 14 years ago

He did say, why do we wear trousers, not why does anyone wear trousers, and he and most of his readers are in western cultures.

wisty• 14 years ago

> But with cross-cultural perspective, would consider the trousers (often in the form of "pajamas") worn by women in China and southeast Asia developed in cultures where peasant women certainly did not have opportunity to ride horses

The article notes that Qin warriors (as in the scary red-faced general Guan Di, terracotta warriors and the unification of China) had an advantage over the other kingdoms as they had trousers. And male fashion is often driven led by the military.

eHow (yeah, worse than wikipedia) says Chinese peasants originally wore one-piece dresses / sacks. Along the River During the Qingming Festival (1085-1145 painting) certainly shows lots of trousers, but that's almost 1000 years after the Qin dynasty.

Pajamas came to the UK via India and the Middle East; but that was well after the time period in which trousers became popular. The Qin dynasty and adoption of cavalry by the Romans is a really long time ago.

billswift• 14 years ago

In fact, it isn't even completely true in Europe. Early Medieval serfs in Northern Europe also wore trousers, but rarely, if ever, rode. The major point, shared by your Chinese workers, is freedom of movement and aversion (in Northern Europe driven as much by climate as modesty) to nudity. Protection, as from brush, is another factor, but more an occasional one, rather than always present.

grumblepeet• 14 years ago

None of this goes to explain Capri pants. Horses be damned...sometimes there just isn't an excuse...

clvv• 14 years ago

What about Native American cultures? They had not seen horses until the Europeans arrived, but they certainly had pants.

tomrod• 14 years ago

I think that point was made in the article--they wore kilts, not pants, before Europeans.

jasonkolb• 14 years ago

Looking at in perspective, it makes sense. Every cool guy is pretending to be a cowboy.

Now, who is going to be the celebrity to go all Socrates on us and re-introduce the tunic.

Interestingly, Julius Caeser was supposed to be some kind of a rebel for wearing his tunic "loosely belted" with fringes. It was the equivalent of long hair in the 60's and 70's for our culture.

Wouldn't it be wild if things went around again--that far?

10dpd• 14 years ago

Pants in the UK = underwear. So why do we wear underwear?

ars• 14 years ago

Probably as a garment designed to be easy to wash (it's small, and not visible so wear and discoloration from washing is not seen) and be changed more often than pants.

etfb• 14 years ago

I'm given to understand [1] that cars, or at least buggies and coaches and other things like them, are the reason cloaks got replaced with coats and jackets, to the eternal detriment of cool. If you've ever tried driving anywhere with a full circle cloak on, this requires no explanation.

[1] Handwave, handwave... feel free to add [citation needed] there if you want to

driverdan• 14 years ago

How about linking to the original work instead of this ripoff blogspam?

http://socialevolutionforum.com/2012/07/10/cultural-evolutio...

mcguire• 14 years ago

To be read while listening to a Tribute to Pants (http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Tribute_to_Pants)!

hobb0001• 14 years ago

Why aren't capes still around, then?

(They were made for horseback riding, too)

bdunbar• 14 years ago

Capes were (briefly) mentioned up the page a bit.

Capes are impractical if one is driving a car, dangerous if one is working around machinery.

afterburner• 14 years ago

From wikipedia:

"Trousers first enter recorded history in the 6th century BCE, with the appearance of horse-riding Iranian peoples in Greek ethnography. At this time, not only the Persians, but also allied Eastern and Central Asian peoples such as the Bactrians, Armenians, Tigraxauda Scythians and Xiongnu Hunnu, are known to have worn them. Trousers are believed to have been worn by both sexes among these early users.

Republican Rome viewed the draped clothing of Greek and Minoan (Cretan) culture as an emblem of civilization and disdained trousers as the mark of barbarians."

So, while the Romans did eventually copy the trousers once the barbarians were overrunning and ruling Roman lands in the western half of the Empire, it's disappointing that the author didn't go further back. Back to the barbarians, which likely goes back to the central Asian peoples.

nsns• 14 years ago

While cultural artifacts get input and evolve from their functional use, such uses can't explain anything, certainly not mass adoption. The main reason for clothes is cultural, and their main use is as a social code (e.g. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fashion_System.html?...).

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

The story I got told in school was that as the romans advanced through Gaul and into ancient Britain, they were appalled at the leather britches worn by the barbarian tribes. When they finally took (part of) Britain however, they realised that the extreme cold (compared to rome) meant that the trousers were basically essential.

All those barbarian tribes would have been horsemen, so the article fits with this idea I suppose.

guard-of-terra• 14 years ago

Or maybe it's just the cold climate? Where appropriate.

teeja• 14 years ago

Lots of reasons for pants. Anyone who's ever lived/worked in a rural area knows what happens 15 seconds after you leave "the path" and that branch, bush, weed, rock, bee, deerfly, barbed vine, rattlesnake, etc. grants you pain. Thus pants - and boots.

Funny some of us are that removed from the human realities that existed for a million years.

Why Do We Wear Pants? Horses.

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