Weirdest armors of the ancient world?

[Intranetusa]

In your opinion, what is the weirdest armors of the world? Asia, Europe, Africa, Americas, etc

Tree bark armor, reed armor, paper armor, bamboo armor, skeleton/bones armor, skull helmet, etc

[blank]

Paper armor is quite weird i think

[blitzkrieg80]

+1 armor... although mithril is interesting, while adamantium is indestructable

skull cups are the best though

[Watchman]

Nohing wrong with paper armour though (we're not talking modern wood-pulp paper here you know...). Layer strong paper thickly and stitch and cut into suitable shape, and you end up with a pretty decent sort of body armour. Was particularly strong against armour IIRC.

Not terribly ancient though AFAIK, as the Chinese experiments with it were well into the second millenium AD...

...around the strangest I can recall reading of would be that one suit of - kid you not - gilt pangolin hide the Brits nicked from some corner of India...

[antisocialmunky]

Lol, that's one way of thinking about scale armor though its more like hair armour. Poor Pangolins - they're so cute.

[Intranetusa]

Nohing wrong with paper armour though (we're not talking modern wood-pulp paper here you know...). Layer strong paper thickly and stitch and cut into suitable shape, and you end up with a pretty decent sort of body armour. Was particularly strong against armour IIRC.

Not terribly ancient though AFAIK, as the Chinese experiments with it were well into the second millenium AD...

...around the strangest I can recall reading of would be that one suit of - kid you not - gilt pangolin hide the Brits nicked from some corner of India...

I think their experiments with paper armor started when they invented paper around the Han Dynasty ~200 BCE to ~300 CE...

Pangolin? Is that the creature that looks like an armadillo? That's basically natural leather-scale armor! lol

[blank]

Nohing wrong with paper armour though (we're not talking modern wood-pulp paper here you know...). Layer strong paper thickly and stitch and cut into suitable shape, and you end up with a pretty decent sort of body armour. Was particularly strong against armour IIRC.

Not terribly ancient though AFAIK, as the Chinese experiments with it were well into the second millenium AD...

...around the strangest I can recall reading of would be that one suit of - kid you not - gilt pangolin hide the Brits nicked from some corner of India...

okay then foreskin armor is the weirdest

Unless it is effective of course

[russia almighty]

That bronze armor they found in that Mycenaean site .

[Poulp']

Silk armor, light, effective and trendy

[Olaf The Great]

That bronze armor they found in that Mycenaean site .

The ancient Noble plate armor with the bone helmet?

That armour is WEIRD.

[Intranetusa]

The ancient Noble plate armor with the bone helmet?

That armour is WEIRD.

Yeh, the bones looked like teeth sewn together to form a helmet... :/

[DaCrAzYmOfO]

anyone got a link to an image?

[Watchman]

I'm guessing they're referring to the Dendra panoply. Here is at least a few pics of it as well as the boar-tusk helmet.

AFAIK nobody really has any solid idea what the fig that harness really was for, as it seems a bit too heavy and restrictive for any known pattern of chariot warfare and is certainly that for combat on foot... one theory I've seen even argues that it was basically a ceremonial wear an elderly king or similar bigwig, who no longer expected to fight in the frontlines, wore to appear distinctive and impressive to his underlings from his command post.

[russia almighty]

Watchman I've heard that too . I've also heard that part of the reason why they don't know how it would have worked is because they really can't do fine detail inspection of it. That one dude who is known for the hoplite website did make a suit of the stuff and said it wasn't that restrictive . He also was the dude that wrote that whole thing about Mycenaean chariot lancers being BS and the part of the osprey book that mentioned it should be ignored .


I found in that particular osprey book interesting how near the end of that era they started using horses in a dragoon fashion . Ride them to battle and get off and fight .

[Watchman]

Right, but that's not a very sensible way to use something as intricate and expensive as a chariot really; plus it bears more resemblance to the fashion the Celts later used their chariots in rather than the chariot-warfare patterns of Late Bronze Age Near East and eastern Mediterranean region. Personally I suspect the "battle taxi" developement was a late transitional thing, and may well have actually only come around after the fall of the Myceneans. And then there's the thing with Odysseys and his famously strong bow (ie. a composite) which would hint of traditions more akin to the archer-platform approach common in the Middle East...

...and the Dendra armour is in any case unsuited for either.

As for the lancer thing, there are AFAIK surviving vase-paintings and such that appear to depict chariot warriors wiellding long two-handed spears. One is also reminded of the practice of the nearby Hittites to employ large heavy chariots carrying a spearman plus two other guys for shock assault role.

Bottom line is, nobody really has any good idea. The muddled Homeric accounts come from a rather later era when the heyday of the war chariot was already well over and doubly so in the Greek world, and archeological evidence AFAIK only attests that chariots played a quite central part in Mycenean warfare without giving good clues as to how exactly they were used.

[russia almighty]

No Watchman in that particular Osprey book it said that near the end some Mycenaean soldiers might have actually rode horses , not chariots to the battle site and then get off to go fight .

[Intranetusa]

IMO, Osprey is a kiddy history book...

If you read any of their novels regarding East Asia, their illustrations hilariously depicts "eyeless" East Asians who literally all look like they have their eyes closed shut.

[Watchman]

No Watchman in that particular Osprey book it said that near the end some Mycenaean soldiers might have actually rode horses , not chariots to the battle site and then get off to go fight .

I prefer to take what the Osprey books say with a grain of salt, personally (I've read the one on war chariots too incidentally). Given the relative proximity of the semi-steppe of western Black Sea coast I wouldn't be one bit surprised if some of the northern Myceneans had gotten into the idea of sitting on horses, doubtless under the influence of their "barbarian" neighbours. Doubly so as those selfsame "barbarians" were no doubt experimenting with cavalry themselves (in turn influenced by the steppe peoples proper), which in combination with the geography of the region would have created military necessities similar to those which made the Assyrians develop domestic articulated infantry and cavalry arms to supplement their chariotry.

However the main point is that given considerations such as the geography of the Greek peninsula and what surviving evidence suggests of Mycenean warfare it is difficult to see what point there would have been for using the costly chariots just to ferry around small groups of elite soldiers; common Mycenean infantry apparently fought as close-order unarticulated heavy infantry armed with long spears and large shields, not really something it makes much sense to have small units of elite soldiers batter against in the absence of mobile articulated "assault" infantry to support them and "follow up" any breaches.

On the other hand the "battle taxi" approach is sensible enough as more or less a pure status symbol for the elite in a period no longer capable of raising and maintaining chariotry in such numbers that they could be used as a massed arm of their own, ie. the "dark centuries" following the collapse of the Mycenean palace economy - which would be the traditions the Homeric accounts would in practice draw on for the most part, as pretty much nobody alive in Greece when those stories were written down would have had any idea as to how massed chariot warfare of the grand old form actually worked.