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Next time you put on a pair of pants, thank the Horse Goddess.

According to current evidence, pants were invented by those same horse-riding, pot-smoking, milk-drinking Indo-European pastoralists who, starting about 6000 years ago, spread out in all directions from the Pontic-Caspian steppes to take over the known world: our linguistic ancestors.

Why, one might wonder, did they invent pants?

Easily told: because they were also the first to ride horses.

Did you ever try riding a horse while wearing a kilt?

Every word's a story.

In their 6000-year history, the lower, bifurcated garment has gone by many names, and pants are only the youngest.

The word, of course, is short for pantaloons, named for a stock character of 17th-century Italian comedy whose signature form of dress they were. Another version would have it that "pantaloons" was a nickname for Venetians, whose patron saint was St. Pantalone. Your call.

Older than pants were trousers, derived from the Gaelic triubhas. The Scots word trews remains more faithful to the original Celtic pronunciation than the longer, extended Southron version, which would seems to have acquired its extra syllable under the influence of drawers, something you draw on.

Older yet, the tunic-ed and toga-ed Romans were horrified to discover the barbarous inhabitants of Gallia Comata (“long-haired Gaul”) wearing leg-coverings that they called braccae. Germans wore them too—you know, those hairy barbarians are all alike—and called them by the same name, whence English breeches, and the Americanized britches. (Once again, Scots breeks remains faithful to the old Celtic pronunciation.) To the Hwicce, the original Anglo-Saxon Tribe of Witches, they were bréc, the plural of bróc, “leg covering.”

Braccae take us back in time about as far as we can go. The word exists in both Celtic and Germanic stocks, so in all likelihood derive, at the very least, from the time of the common tongue from which both language stocks derive: possibly 3500-3000 BCE.

What the original horse-riding, pot-smoking, milk-drinking pastoralists called them on the prairies of eastern Europe 6000 years ago, we don't know.

This is Part Two. You can find Part One here.

Let's continue our exploration of Minoan clothing, shall we? Perhaps the most well-known item of Minoan clothing is the open-front top that Minoan women wear in much of the art. As I mentioned in Part One, this style probably involved sacred symbolism and would not have been considered racy or immoral in that time and place.

People are fascinated by Minoan clothing, but they're also confused by it. I thought I would take a little time to explain and show you some images from Minoan art so we can all enjoy the lovely garments the Minoans wore.

Please note that this is a two-part blog post (Part Two coming next week) but it's NOT divided into men's vs. women's clothing, because there is considerable overlap in some of the styles of clothing worn by different genders.

Minoan art is marvelously colorful, even 3500 years later. Was ancient Crete that colorful in real life? Probably.

Part of that color would have been due to the plant and animal substances used to dye the fabric that made the Minoans' clothing, household textiles, and temple decorations.