clothing and footwear: Asia and the Pacific 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 The 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 Royalty wore a floor-length tunic under several long, fringed shawls The weight and draping of the numerous shawls probably inhibited movement to such an extent that simpler dress was probably worn for everyday activities such as hunting The clothing was heavily decorated with either embroidery or weavings The specific garment worn by the king on any given day was determined by priests The 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 The 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 availability 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 clothing, and women wore skirts of grass or leaves Both men and women went barefoot, which made sense given the warm climate 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 This tunic could be bound at the sides and probably evolved into a warm jacket Throughout 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 The region that is now China has the earliest remains of clothing in Asia and the Pacific, 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 277 animal hide By the end of the Zhou Dynasty (256 b.c.e.) most Chinese were wearing shoes made of silk interwoven with grass fibers, 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 The san was a jacket; it could be padded with straw to provide warmth in cold weather The ku were trousers Until the fi rst century b.c.e most clothing of poor Chinese, which included almost everyone, was made from hemp, a plant with tough fibers Linen, made from flax, slowly overtook hemp as the preferred fabric The 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 different colors for different 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 The chun also became common It was a skirt with pleats and was worn instead 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 first century c.e., with Chinese geographers of the third century recording 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 modern-day “flip-flops.” Zoris were sandals of wood or woven grass with a grip that fit 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 The people of the Philippines tended to follow the clothing 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 first using bark, they later learned to grow hemp, cotton, and flax, which they used mostly for loincloths, though shirts and blankets became common, perhaps in the first century b.c.e To the southwest, an independent tradition of clothing and footwear 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 often the only article of clothing