Pants found in Xinjiang date back 3,300 years

A pair of 3,300-year-old trousers, stripped from a mummy recently unearthed in Turpan, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, might be some of the oldest in the world, archaeologists said.

The centuries-old pants, found in May, were made of three pieces of cloth, two for legs and one for the crotch. They had woven patterns for decoration.

Lu Enguo, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology in Xinjiang, said the research team believes the trousers are the oldest pair with a crotch ever found in China. Prior discoveries were simply two legs that tied together at the waist, like chaps.