TL 1 Cloth and Jack Armour As Good As Kevlar?

Laminated Linen Protected Alexander The Great

Alexander's men wore linothorax, a highly effective type of body armor created by laminating together layers of linen, research finds.

A Kevlar-like armor might have helped Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) conquer nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades, according to new reconstructive archaeology research.

Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander and his soldiers protected themselves with linothorax, a type of body armor made by laminating together layers of linen.

"While we know quite a lot about ancient armor made from metal, linothorax remains something of a mystery since no examples have survived, due to the perishable nature of the material," Gregory Aldrete, professor of history and humanistic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, told Discovery News.

"Nevertheless, we have managed to show that this linen armor thrived as a form of body protection for nearly 1,000 years, and was used by a wide variety of ancient Mediterranean civilizations," Aldrete said.


There's more available through the link.

Layered linen fused together with glue from rabbit skins and flax seeds. Wow.
 
Yep. I've also read about the effectiveness of layers of wet silk (multiple fancy shirts worn after being soaked and rung out) in early firearms duels. Neither is the kind of stuff that I would expect to stop modern bullets though. So not quite Kevlar but better than nothing. In Traveller terms I'd call it Jack, not Cloth (which is early Kevlar in Traveller).
 
far-trader said:
I've also read about the effectiveness of layers of wet silk (multiple fancy shirts worn after being soaked and rung out) in early firearms duels.
While silk is a surprisingly strong material, its main advantage and the
main reason why it was often used as a kind of (very) light armour is
that it is easy to remove from a wound and does rarely cause wound
infections, while other materials - especially wool - are almost impos-
sible to remove from a wound and almost always cause wound infec-
tions. Since wound infections even from minor wounds killed at least
as many people as the wounds themselves did, silk was a true life sa-
ver - it did rarely prevent the wound, but preventing the wound infec-
tion alone significantly increased the chance to survive.
 
Worth noting that this form of armour seems to have gone out of use pretty much at the time mail appeared on the scene (about 300 BCE). It may be good stuff, but rivetted mail is pretty much blade and arrow proof protection.
 
rinku said:
Worth noting that this form of armour seems to have gone out of use pretty much at the time mail appeared on the scene (about 300 BCE). It may be good stuff, but rivetted mail is pretty much blade and arrow proof protection.
And mail pretty much went out of fashion when gunpowder made its way to the West from China.

But for the day, it must have been pretty effective. And the point they are trying to make is that it may have been more effective than the history books you're referring to painted it as.

The history books don't always get it right. When new evidence turns up, they do have to rewrite them on occasion, you know.
 
Yeah, this stiffened cloth was clearly time consuming, and therefore expensive, to make, and not as good as metal armours when they became more available, the better equipped warrior gets metal plates or mail of one kind or another.
Remember that various combinations of leather and padded cloth remained in use as supplementary layer of armour for the better off, and sole armour for the poor, until the end of the 17th century AD in Europe, and longer in other parts of the world.

Egil
 
rinku said:
...but rivetted mail is pretty much blade and arrow proof protection.
Not really, as the French knights learned during their charges against the
English longbowmen, and the European knights in general during their en-
counters with Mongol horse archers. For a while the Popes even attemp-
ted to outlaw longbows and crossbows in Europe, because with them one
of those lowly unwashed peasants could easily kill a noble knight in chain
mail or plate armour.
 
True, but those were, in order, the longbow, composite bow and crossbow, each of which was significantly more powerful than the sort of bows that would have been used in the era under discussion here.

For that matter, multiple layers of silk over light armour was supposed to have been a very effective protection multiplier used by Saracen horsemen - not so much weight, in this case, as heat, but it was supposedly disconcerting to european knights (who'd been raised with mail armour) how effective it was.
 
locarno24 said:
... each of which was significantly more powerful than the sort of bows that would have been used in the era under discussion here.
This is true for the longbow, but not true for the crossbow and the com-
posite bow. :)

Crossbows have been in use in Greece during Alexander's time, and the
Scythians had used composite bows for many centuries before Alexander
was born. In fact, several composite bows were discovered in the tomb of
Tutankhamun, who lived much earlier.
 
I'd just like to add something here.

When I read this article, it just cried out for inclusion in a discussion thread on the Traveller board.

Not RuneQuest. Traveller.

I still have no idea why I haven't X-posted to the RQ board. Maybe it's because this had more to do with ballistics engineering and the science of armour-making. Or maybe it's because the archaeology felt more important than the lore, or something.

Nonetheless, this is a good discussion here. You can imagine an alien TL 1 species developing a kind of lightweight cloth armour out of a local material that happens to be tough enough to stop a standard ball round.

Imagine the fun of shooting some alien tough guy in the shoulder pad. He falls down. The character takes a bow.

Then the bad guy gets up again ... :)
 
Classical crossbows weren't of sufficient draw weight to be real mail smashers as far as I know. You need steel bows and mechanical cocking equipment to manage that, really. And even then, it's not brilliant as a field weapon, since charging cavalry can close the gap before you can loose more than a shot or two. And anyway, I said nothing about being bolt proof :)

All credit to the Scythian composite bow, but my understanding is that the metal armours of the time were able to deal with it. Composite bows are more efficient than self bows, but mail smashing ultimately comes down to draw weight and the cross section of the head.
 
Can I point out, somewhat cynically, that sometimes a General might want to equip his troops with the cheapest armour he can get for a couple of reasons.

One, it's the cheapest armour. If it happens to be cost-effective, so much the better.

Two, since it uses materials that you only need to grow and harvest it reduces the need for specialist smelters, armourers and people to get all those fiddly rings and links knit together.

Three, if you equipped a whole bunch of infantry with this armour and sent them out first, they can soak up the arrows fired by the enemy archers. Then you can send in the somewhat better-armoured cavalry.
 
alex_greene said:
Three, if you equipped a whole bunch of infantry with this armour and sent them out first, they can soak up the arrows fired by the enemy archers. Then you can send in the somewhat better-armoured cavalry.
In a way, that is similar to Alexander's way to win the Battle of Jaxartes.
He sent a large unit of mounted spearmen into the enemy fire on a sui-
cidal mission to attract the Scythian horse archers and bind them to a po-
sition, and then surrounded and slaughtered them while they were busy
slaughtering his mounted spearmen ...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jaxartes
 
rust said:
In a way, that is similar to Alexander's way to win the Battle of Jaxartes.
He sent a large unit of mounted spearmen into the enemy fire on a sui-
cidal mission to attract the Scythian horse archers and bind them to a po-
sition, and then surrounded and slaughtered them while they were busy
slaughtering his mounted spearmen ...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jaxartes

Also known as 'Send in the Peasants! (or Arrow Magnets)'* tactic in Medieval Total War...

* You have to say it like Brian Blessed
 
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