[HN Gopher] Unraveling the linothorax mystery, or how linen armo... ___________________________________________________________________ Unraveling the linothorax mystery, or how linen armor came to dominate our lives (2013) Author : pavel_lishin Score : 153 points Date : 2022-07-05 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (jhupress.wordpress.com) (TXT) w3m dump (jhupress.wordpress.com) | jacobr1 wrote: | I first encountered the idea in fiction a few months ago reading | "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" [1]. For those interested | in this kind of thing, it is a fictional mashup of a variety of | technical innovations when an engineer (the army core kind) is | the highest ranking military officer left during a siege. | | [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37946419-sixteen-ways- | to... | 99_00 wrote: | It's good to hear about this. I still remember hearing about it a | decade ago https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34810209 | | Our view of history is based on what has survived, metal, stone, | clay, some papers that have been copied or existed in dry | climate. | | Anything that can rot and hasn't been reproduced, and was in a | wet climate will be lost and removed from the picture we create | of history. | [deleted] | moron4hire wrote: | According to this paper, the idea that linothorax was made from | glued layers is probably due to a mistranslation. | | https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/mous.17.3.003 | | But this paper came out 7 years after OP. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | I remember Terry Jones doing some slapstick documentary on the | First Crusade, and described how some footsoldiers wearing padded | "armor", would be seen with multiple arrows sticking out of the | armor in battle, and still fighting. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson | debacle wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzWipvLiCjY | | Todd's Workshop is a great channel for exploring these | technologies. | trhway wrote: | I read somewhere that such simple armor was supposedly made by | having the sewn together linen layers placed in a basin in the | expected shape and pouring sea water and letting it dry in the | Sun over and over again. | worik wrote: | Silk has been used this way too, I believe. | | There may be some advantage in the relative softness too, | relative to iron. When something bangs into it, it will not | transmit all the shock through to the body but will absorb some | by deforming. | bsder wrote: | As I understand it, one of the advantages of silk is that it | wrapped around things such that you could remove the arrowhead | without surgery. | | That's a really big deal for avoiding infection. | kayodelycaon wrote: | Plate armor and mail were typically worn over padding. | exhilaration wrote: | Silk used in bulletproof vests (1999, Thailand): | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/379338.stm | zeristor wrote: | A lovely little video about growing, and processing Flax to make | linen: | | https://youtu.be/TFuj7sXVnIU | [deleted] | msrenee wrote: | Do they discuss the draw weight of the bow or any measurements | they made to determine that the weapons were imparting the same | damage as would have been common historically? It takes a while | to work up to the sort of draw weight that was common in trained | archers. I'm not just talking about longbows. A 90 lb recurve | isn't something you just pick up one day. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > Alicia Aldrete is coauthor, with Gregory S. Aldrete and Scott | Bartell, of Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor: Unraveling | the Linothorax Mystery. The website of the University of | Wisconsin-Green Bay's Linothorax Project contains more behind- | the-scenes information on this unparalleled effort, including an | eight-minute mini-documentary and additional images. | | As an aside, Gregory Aldrete has a bunch of courses on Audible | under "Great Courses". (You can also get them from The Teaching | Company now call Wondrium). | | I heartily recommend that you listen to them if you are at all | interested in ancient history. | jcoq wrote: | I came here to say the same exact thing! These courses are | excellent. | | As a follow-up to those courses, there are also some courses | about the middle ages by Philip Daileader that pick-up the | story at the decline of the Western empire. | | (Also, I'm deriving great value from the Wondrium app). | toss1 wrote: | Working in high-performance composites, this is fantastic work! | | It never ceases to amaze me how some of the oldest technology was | composites, and how much we can do with even basic materials - it | doesn't have to be carbon fiber and epoxy to get great results, | in this case linen and rabbit glue makes really effective and | lightweight armor. | | Sort of related, the Mongol's archery bows from Genghis Khan's | time were also amazing pieces of engineering available materials | into high-performing tools. | klyrs wrote: | As cool as this is, the historicity is questionable. | | > But Peter Connolly's reconstruction was based on a mis- | remembered, twice-translated summary of a Byzantine chronicle | which did not mention glue, not on an ancient text, artefact, | or depiction | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linothorax | toss1 wrote: | Interesting - doesn't disprove it, but certainly makes it at | best a very flimsy basis and a long conjecture. I wonder if | there were any other things made with such composites of | binder and fibers or fabric, or if this is really a long shot | in the dark | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Unraveling the linothorax mystery (2013)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129519 - Aug 2020 (42 | comments) | tristor wrote: | There is a comment from the author in response to someone that I | found fascinating, and I am quoting here to respond to: | | > We found that even more of a threat than rain was one's own | sweat on a hot day. So, yes, it does need waterproofing, both | inside and out. We did a number of experiments along those lines, | and found that rubbing a block of beeswax over all sides of the | armor provided nice waterproofing. It also makes the armor smell | nice! When you wear it for a couple hours, your own body heat | softens the glue a bit and makes it conform to your body shape, | so it is much more comfortable to wear than rigid types of armor. | Our reconstructions weighed about 10 pounds-about one third the | weight of bronze armor that would provide the same degree of | protection. Thanks for the questions! | | It would explain to some degree why this armor may have found | such military success during that time period, that it was more | comfortably and more closely conformed to the body while offering | similar protections. One of the things many people who've never | had to wear armor for an extended period of time on a hot day | don't realize is how horribly uncomfortable armor is, and how | that discomfort can be a severe distraction under battlefield | conditions. | | One thing that also interested me about this is that we found | that one of the strongest materials we have available to use in | modern materials science is also laminated cloth, in this case | carbon fiber laminates. By ensuring that the direction of the | weaves are perpendicular to one another when doing a cloth layup, | and using a sufficiently strong adhesive/sealant, these types of | materials are incredibly strong. Carbon fiber and carbon kevlar | both are exceptionally strong materials that would make great | armor (and do), and it seems the linothorax is essentially an | early application of some of the same ideas, with lesser source | materials. | eyko wrote: | A lot of their work is speculative (e.g. it's not clear that | the layers of linen were glued, but they went with the | assumption). It's interesting that they did not consider one of | the most likely combinations: linen layers sewn onto leather. | This would be more flexible (glue makes linen quite stiff) and | more sweat resistant. | ltbarcly3 wrote: | It would also be relatively easy to puncture. Gluing the | linen creates a composite material which should greatly | outperform either of the component materials (the primitive | animal glue will be almost crumbly on it's own, and woven | cloth is very weak against punctures since there is very | force holding parallel fibers of material close together). As | is stated elsewhere, this is why things like fiberglass and | carbon fiber are ubiquitous in the modern world. | kayodelycaon wrote: | Let me introduce you to the gambeson: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson :) | | Multiple layers of quilted cloth are extremely effective. | ltbarcly3 wrote: | Im familiar, i think it works largely by being loose and | giving. Arrows are fast, they have a lot of kinetic | energy but relatively little momentum. You can decelerate | them pretty effectively. | [deleted] | dsr_ wrote: | Linen is also going to be cheaper than bronze (and later iron), | even though linen fabric is quite an expensive material by the | standards of a pre-industrial society. If you can grow flax, | you get edible flaxseed, flaxseed oil, and linen fibers for | thread and then weaving... and next year, hopefully, you get a | new crop of flax. Save the bronze for your swords. | giantg2 wrote: | If I remember correctly, if you harvest for fibers, that's | before it goes into seed. | Retric wrote: | Iron was likely relatively cheap to produce compared to | Linen. You can find various YouTube videos of people | processing iron ore by hand fairly rapidly though it takes | significant quantities of wood or coal. Something like 2 | weeks of labor to the extract and process raw ore for enough | iron to make a breastplate seems likely. Though | transportation would be an issue. Linen on the other hand | required extreme processing simply to get thread and takes up | valuable farmland, but could be produced locally. | https://ulsterlinen.com/flax-to-linen/ | | Linen armor would only have been relatively cheap as a means | of recycling old garments. However, that's likely to degrade | it's protective value. | scarmig wrote: | Raw ore wasn't the limiting factor for iron production: it | was all about the wood. Coal has the issues that, without | coking, it neither burns hot enough nor clean enough (i.e. | it adds lots of sulfur to the iron, and the resulting alloy | is inferior for pretty much all purposes). As a result, | iron and steel production wasn't as bound by locality to | mines nearly as much as it was to locality to fuel sources | (i.e. forests). | | To give a sense for the figures involved, 1kg of iron would | require around 15kg of charcoal, which itself would have to | be charcoaled from >100kg of wood. | | From this, you end up seeing things like Elba being | entirely deforested by the time of Caesar, and its still | productive iron mines would have their ores shipped to the | mainland for processing. | acjohnson55 wrote: | Interesting! | | That aligns with my understanding is that the real | revolution of the iron age was not that iron was a superior | material (at least initially), but that it was much more | abundant than copper and (especially) tin for bronze, which | democratized which people and societies were able to build | iron gear. | | A compelling theory to me of the late bronze age collapse | is that in the bronze age, you had a very globalized | society for the purpose of keeping the bronze supply chain | intact. But ironworking eliminated the interdependence and | the importance of the elite networks that sustained the | supply chain. So then the whole "civilized" world quickly | fragmented into much more micro polities. Many of the | states that made the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age | relatively intact already had well developed ironworking. | | The Assyrians were able to build a new value proposition | for international empire. They institutionalized many of | the civil and engineering innovations we attribute to the | post-Roman world, kicking off what would become the | classical era. | kbenson wrote: | > By ensuring that the direction of the weaves are | perpendicular to one another when doing a cloth layup, and | using a sufficiently strong adhesive/sealant, these types of | materials are incredibly strong. | | I wonder if they tested that when creating their replica linen | armor? That seems like the kind of thing ancient armor makers | would definitely have tested out. | sillyquiet wrote: | >One of the things many people who've never had to wear armor | for an extended period of time on a hot day don't realize is | how horribly uncomfortable armor is, and how that discomfort | can be a severe distraction under battlefield conditions. | | Maybe! A well tailored and properly weight-distributed mail | hauberk (which is also conformal) is surprisingly comfortable | for extended period of time in all kinds of weather. (Source: | my own experience in medieval re-enactment). What gets you in | hot weather are the textiles - with mail its the necessary | padding under the mail that will cause issues in hot weather. | | the author's point that linen was _more_ comfortable than | 'rigid' armor was _probably_ true, but I will point out that | rigid armors were also individually tailored, balanced, and | created for optimal weight distribution. | | As an aside mail armor was a successful and popular armor for a | millennium, from the Iron Age to the middle ages (and continued | to be successful as an augment to plate and in other contexts | like South Asia and India until probably the 16th century). It | was _probably_ contemporary to the linen armor of the article | (In time, not geographically - it was used most heavily in | iron-rich regions in central Europe at first). | BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote: | Composite layups in aircraft often rotate layers 45deg from the | previous layer. | pixodaros wrote: | The Green Bay Team reproduced a type of armour which nobody can | show was made before 1970. The glue in their linen armour comes | from a bad translation of a hasty summary of a medieval Roman | chronicle https://www.joshobrouwers.com/articles/glued-linen- | armour/ | Geonode wrote: | In a lot of composites, the titular material isn't the main | material. It's almost always glue instead. Which is fine, but one | of the drawbacks is the thing is usually heavier and stiffer than | you would imagine. | | Here it's rabbit glue, which is probably a type of hide glue? | soperj wrote: | They go into that. Apparently your body heat would reduce the | stiffness. | TheMagicHorsey wrote: | The manufacturing process seems very like an ancient version of | how modern carbon fiber armor is built. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-05 23:00 UTC)