indicated marital and social status. Free, married women
wore veils, while slaves and prostitutes did not. A concubine
was allowed to wear a veil only when she accompanied a
wife. Th e Assyrians and Persians wore sandals with thick
or thin soles, depending on the intended use. Closed shoes
were available, though they were not common, and high
boots were worn by soldiers on horseback.
As is typical of the clothing styles of many civilizations,
royals dressed more elaborately than ordinary people. Roy-
alty wore a fl oor-length tunic under several long, fringed
shawls. Th e weight and draping of the numerous shawls prob-
ably inhibited movement to such an extent that simpler dress
was probably worn for everyday activities such as hunting.
Th e clothing was heavily decorated with either embroidery or
weavings. Th e specifi c garment worn by the king on any given
day was determined by priests. Th e Assyrians believed that
some days were more favorable than others, and the priests
settled on the appropriate attire, fabric, and color for each
day. On some unfavorable days the king was not permitted
to change clothing. Assyrians wore high, brimless hats, and
the king wore the tallest hat. Th e king also wore a false beard
to supplement his own beard. Children had little status in
Assyrian society and probably were dressed as cheaply and
minimally as possible.
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Factors that govern types of clothing are climate, the avail-
ability of resources for making cloth, and the wealth of the
people wearing the clothing. Pictures drawn on rock faces
by the Australian aborigines suggest that throughout their
long history they wore either loincloths made of animal skin
or nothing at all. In Oceania males typically wore no cloth-
ing, and women wore skirts of grass or leaves. Both men and
women went barefoot, which made sense given the warm cli-
mate in which they lived.
In eastern and northern Asia the nomadic peoples wore
animal skins, with loincloths being the primary garment for
both men and women. In cold regions a simple tunic was worn
sometime before recorded history; it consisted of a rectangle
of animal hide with a hole cut in it to facilitate pulling the
garment over the head. Th is tunic could be bound at the sides
and probably evolved into a warm jacket. Th roughout Asia,
from the Yellow River south and including India, loincloths
were all that everyone but the rich and powerful wore. As late
as 100 b.c.e. men and women in Japan wore only loincloths
while going about their everyday work. In most of Indochina
loincloths were all that was worn by peasants, and they were
also the basic garments in India until the Muslim invasion in
the 1700s c.e.
Th e region that is now China has the earliest remains of
clothing in Asia and the Pacifi c, where shoes made of straw
from about 5000 b.c.e. have been found. By 2000 b.c.e. the
many ethnic groups in the region were making shoes from
animal hide. By the end of the Zhou Dynasty (256 b.c.e.)
most Chinese were wearing shoes made of silk interwoven
with grass fi bers, nettle cloth, or hemp. Such shoes were
durable enough that soldiers could wear them even while
marching. But by 85 c.e. silk was in such short supply that
commoners had taken to walking barefoot. Before 1550
b.c.e. the Chinese developed the san and the ku. Th e san was
a jacket; it could be padded with straw to provide warmth
in cold weather. Th e ku were trousers. Until the fi rst cen-
tury b.c.e. most clothing of poor Chinese, which included
almost everyone, was made from hemp, a plant with tough
fi bers. Linen, made from fl ax, slowly overtook hemp as the
preferred fabric. Th e ancient Chinese shunned wool because
they associated sheep with barbarian shepherds, which
made wool disgusting to them.
Silk fabric had been developed in the Yellow River area,
perhaps about 1900 b.c.e., and it was the preferred cloth of
the rich because of its durability, shine, and ability to hold
colorful dyes. For the rich, silk was usually made into robes.
By 200 b.c.e. the emperor of China was expected to wear
robes of diff erent colors for diff erent seasons, to encourage
the gods to change the seasons in a reliable order. During the
Han Dynasty of 202 b.c.e. to 220 c.e., the ju became standard
wear. Known in the West as the mandarin shirt, it had a stiff
collar; it remained common into the 1900s c.e. Th e chun also
became common. It was a skirt with pleats and was worn in-
stead of trousers. During the Han era, it became illegal for
poor people to dress well; they were forbidden to wear robes,
silk, or colorful patterns.
Silk reached Korea and Japan probably in the fi rst cen-
tury c.e., with Chinese geographers of the third century re-
cording that the Japanese made a very high grade of silk cloth
that was coveted by Chinese merchants. Before 200 c.e. the
ancient Japanese invented the zori, the forerunner of mod-
ern-day “fl ip-fl ops.” Zoris were sandals of wood or woven
grass with a grip that fi t between the big and second toes and
straps that extended back over both sides of the foot. In about
500 c.e. the Japanese created the kataginu, a vest with broad,
stiff shoulders that became popular with swordsmen because
it gave their arms freedom of movement. Korean footwear
tended to follow the fashions of China, with Koreans in the
north more likely to wear Chinese-style shoes and Koreans in
the south more likely to go barefoot.
Th e people of the Philippines tended to follow the cloth-
ing customs of the peoples of Oceania, but in 2000 b.c.e.
they began weaving cloth and therefore sometimes had more
choices in clothing than others in Oceania. At fi rst using
bark, they later learned to grow hemp, cotton, and fl ax, which
they used mostly for loincloths, though shirts and blankets
became common, perhaps in the fi rst century b.c.e. To the
southwest, an independent tradition of clothing and foot-
wear developed in India. It was a tradition of colorful fabrics
that tended to be lightweight and worn loosely, appropriate
to warm weather. In India and southern Asia the loincloth
remained the principal and oft en the only article of clothingclothing and footwear: Asia and the Pacific 277