One thing that has always bothered me about fantasy worlds is how in pretty much all of them everyone wears pants. Now, I can see where this practice comes from; in the modern day you see a lot of people wearing pants, and their is no problem with wearing pants in your fantasy worlds (its fantasy after all)but next time you make a fantasy world it might be worth thinking about whether they should wear pants. Because there are plenty of reasons not to.

The earliest pair of pants ever discovered was, indeed, an event in pre-recorded history. They were found in a Chinese tomb. The thing is, as far as I can find these were the only pair of pants to have been discovered from that time period. And these pants were not even made for casual wear, they were made for horse riding. So the oldest pair of pants we can find were worn for horse riding,were 3000 years old, and we can not find any other pants from the time period.





the pants

Now, in case you didn’t know. humans have been around a lot longer than 3000 years. In fact, if these were indeed the first pair of pants, then we can safely assume that for most of human history that few people, or possibly no one, wore pants. Of course, that is the obvious explanation for the lack of pants unearthed by anthropologists. There is also the fact that earlier pants may have degraded, but the fact stands that from earlier time periods we have many more examples of non pant garments than we do of pants.

Even once pants were invented people didn’t just immediately fall in love with them. In fact, in Rome. pants were considered signs of being a barbarian. And, by the end of the emperor’s reign pants were banned. Emperor Honorius banned pants being worn in roam in an attempt to get rid of barbarian influence in his country.





notice the distinct lack of pants?

Now, why do people wear pants? Well, they were certainly not worn for comfort or convenience. Wearing a kilt or robe does not restrict your movement as much when you’re casually walking, and there’s always something to be said about a nice breeze in the nether regions. No pants were mostly worn as protections. Whether it be against the elements, your own horse, or weapons. In fact, for men in hotter climates pants are simply downright worse than kilts, as they defeat the purpose of the wobbly bits being on the outside of the body since the point of that particular biological function is supposed to be to keep the wobbly bits cool, while pants keep them at around the same temperature as the rest of the body. Now of course you want to keep your wobbly bits warm in cold environments, and you want to protect your legs when your riding a horse, but if you don’t need such protections than pants don’t have many advantages over things such as the kilt.

look at how not sweaty this guy is!

So next time you are doing something with a fantasy world, I want you to think about pants. Is the culture you are writing about in a cold environment or have riding horses as a common activity? If not, then there is a good chance that it is not logical for them to be wearing pants!





edit; I just want to make clear that I have no problem with pants, and that the fact that most people in the modern age wear them is indicative of their greatness. I just wrote this to say that maybe next time you wright a fantasy culture you should consider whether they wear pants or not. If you look at all of this and still think they should wear pants even if only for cultural reasons or aesthetics, that’s fine, that is why people wear them now. There is absolutely no problem with that.









http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/06/oldest-trousers-found-in-china-mummies



http://www.livescience.com/34077-wearing-pants-horse-riding.html



http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-clothing/roman-trousers-and-breeches.htm



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorius_%28emperor%29



http://mentalfloss.com/article/57250/why-did-we-invent-pants



http://www.utilikilts.com/

