600 year old bra and panties discovered in Europe, a century before it was thought the bra was invented

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600 year old bra and panties discovered in Europe, a century before it was thought the bra was invented

By all accounts of lingerie historians, the bra was invented 500 years ago. So it was surprising for archaeologists to find a set of intact linen lingerie, both bra and panties, from a 600 year old castle in Austria.

Working with a team of her colleagues, archaeologist Beatrix Nutz recently publicized her discovery of several linen bras and some underwear in a medieval castle. Nutz has presented academic papers about her discovery, and even analyzed the underwear for DNA. But the public didn’t hear about the medieval bras until a BBC history program showed pictures of them. Nutz and colleagues also found a pair of men’s underwear (pictured below) — apparently medieval women wore no panties.

What this means is that women were wearing bras long before the invention of corsets. So corsets have been revealed as the uncomfortable, restrictive version of bras. Does that mean the middle ages were actually a more liberal time than the corset-obsessed eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Via