I was most interested in the fact, that they'd actually made some Linothorax, to as accurate as anyone's best guess (since absolutely no-one has actually seen any), and the fact that it was very effective indeed.

The tone of the article is very much in the "holy s&*^, this stuff really is good" vein. I suppose we can blame the generally deeply indoctrinated "progress in history is linear" attitude, drilled into Academics from an early age. Which of course just isn't true. Folks have always been very creative when it came to warfare especially.

There just tends to be this "mouth hanging open- face looking amazed" attitude, when it's `discovered` that people 2500+ yrs ago, had what seems a modern idea in a relevant field.

Shouldn't be :).....I'd still love to see this Ancient Kevlar actually performing in tests though...