The oldest known trousers are three-thousand-year-old wool from Xinjiang
Trousers—also pants or slacks—cover both legs from waist toward ankle. Shorts stop near the knee. Wool trousers from Yanghai cemetery in Turpan, dated between the thirteenth and tenth centuries BC, are the oldest known pair, built for horseback life in ancient Tocharia.
Figurines from the Siberian sites of Mal'ta and Buret' hint that trousers existed in the Upper Paleolithic, though the fabric itself rarely survives. Ötzi, who died between 3350 and 3105 BC near the Austria–Italy border, wore trouser-like leggings. The Yanghai pair, taken from Tarim Basin mummies, had wide crotches as well as straight legs. Salt-mine mummies in Iran preserve short and long trousers from the Persian Empire, and Persepolis carvings of the 6th century BC show them, as do Greek accounts of mounted nomads such as Scythians, Sarmatians and Sogdians.
Greeks found the garment absurd and nicknamed Persian trousers thulakoi, sacks, and republican Rome likewise saw them as barbarian. Colder frontiers changed Roman minds, and two Celtic-derived types took hold: snug feminalia reaching knee or calf, and loose braccae closed at the ankle. Germanic migrants wore braies, and 4th-century examples survive from the Thorsberg bog. Charlemagne habitually wore trousers, saving the Byzantine tunic for ceremonies, but long tunics gradually pushed trousers out of sight until they became underwear for many men.
By the 8th century upper-class men layered drawers under wool or linen outer trousers, called breeches from the 10th century. In the 14th century knights tied their hose to the padded pourpoint, and by the 15th century the most fashionable dropped drawers entirely and joined their hose into what we would call tights. Around 1500 hose split into trunk hose and lower stockings; the trunk hose lengthened into breeches, and by the century's end the codpiece had been absorbed into a fly front.
The English word traces to Scottish Highland trews, Gaelic triubhas, tartan trousers still worn instead of kilts at some weddings and ceilidhs. The word behaves like scissors, appearing only in the plural, except in compounds such as trouser-press. In North America pants is the broad term, while trousers or slacks means tailored garments with belt loops and a fly.
Source: Trousers
