You have
probably heard of Alexander the Great, right? I mean how many have
actually been known as “The Great”? Not too many.
Anyway,
the young Macedonian and his armies conquered the “whole known
world”, by which they meant, everything until his armies said no.
He did get to India, but his troops were too tired and worn out to
conquer any more.
An
important question is, how did they do it? How could they conquer so
much? Well, that is a subject for a historian, which I'm not. Not to
mention that the subject is quite a bit longer than what this blog
post can handle.
Instead,
we're looking at what the average soldier in Alex's army would have
worn. Alex himself would have had the highest quality bronze armor,
but the average dude could never have afforded that. In those days,
a soldier had to supply his own gear, and the common man had no way
to afford metal armor. So, what did they wear?
A
professor at Wisconsin-Green Bay and his students have a very good
hypothesis. They assembled thousands and thousands of images of urns,
vases, wall paintings etc. from that time. The Greeks loved depicting
anything and everything with their art. As a relevant example, a
group of women harvesting flax, weaving it and then presenting armor
to a man. This was an important clue.
Texts of
the period, like the Iliad speak of linothorax, or literally linen
chest. That's chest like torso, not a box for storing things.
The
professor, Greg Aldrete, and his team got to work. The bought linen
made by an artisan who grew her own flax and made cloth. No
artificial materials used. Aldrete knew that the ancient Greeks used
to glue, or laminate, linen for a variety of purposes. Therefore they
chose to go that route and picked up lots of rabbit glue, which is
glue made from, you guessed it, rabbits. Again, no modern chemicals.
At first
they glued together a bunch of linen sheets, but they discovered that
once it dried, they couldn't cut it. Not with knives and not with
scissors or shears. Nothing short of an electric metal saw could go
through it. They had to start again. Using the aforementioned
pictures, they managed to make a tailors pattern and after some trial
and error they assembled a bunch of tunics made from linothorax.
What they
found was amazing. Not only is such a tunic comfortable to wear, but
it's cool in the sun, and after a while it molds to the wearer and
fits even better. And as for armor, it worked amazingly well. No
period bow and arrow could pierce it! Wearing a 12 mm. linothorax tunic made
you almost immune to any arrow manufactured between 600 B.C. and
200B.C. After that, metals got better and bows got stronger, so armor
had to improve.
This
discovery could mean a lot for understanding the ancient world. Yes,
it's a theory, but it's a very likely theory. If you want to know
more, here's the New Yorker article:
So that's
that. Glue and linen. Until next time, have a great week, and look
out for conquering Macedonians!
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