Scale armor
A scale armor ( French Jazeran or Jaseran ) is armor that consists of numerous metal plates ( sheets ), which are attached to a solid surface such as fabric or leather. From the scale armor, the lamellar armor developed in the Far East , which consists of numerous interconnected metal plates that are not sewn or riveted to a solid base. These two types of armor are the oldest types of metal armor in human history.
description
Already the ancient Egyptians used since the 16th century BC. BC scale armor. These scale armor consisted of numerous bronze plates that were riveted or sewn onto reinforced clothing or leather armor . There were even scale armor made of hardened leather panels that were sewn onto linen armor .
Scale armor was also sometimes used by the ancient Greeks . Initially made of bronze, after the start of the European Iron Age also made of iron. But it was more important in the east, e.g. B. with the heavy cavalry of the ancient Persians and with other peoples of today 's Iran .
The Romans also used the scale armor, which they called Lorica Squamata . Here, too, both bronze and iron were used as materials . A peculiarity of the Roman scale armor is the fish-scale shape of the metal plate. In addition to various other types of armor, the Roman legions used scale armor until the fall of the Western Roman Empire . This armor continued to be used in Byzantium .
In the early Middle Ages , at the time of the Carolingian Franks , the Roman scale armor experienced a renaissance with a modified appearance. It was mainly used by the Panzerreiter special unit . The appearance of this armor is only known from written and pictorial sources ( Psalter ) . No finds have yet been made. In the High Middle Ages, it was widely believed that moving chain mail was the preferred metal armor for knights , but scale armor, which was easier to manufacture and cheaper than chain mail, was also used during this period.
In the late Middle Ages various special forms of dandruff tank came up, who were all significantly more affordable than a Platemail therefore especially from the simple and infantry were used. An example is the brigantine , which consists of hundreds of closely stacked iron plates that are sewn and riveted between two layers of textile. A brigantine could be tested against crossbow bolt fire. One of the most recent finds was made in the former English base of Jamestown in what is now the United States; it dates from 1610. The scale armor consists of more than a thousand overlapping iron plates sewn between two layers of fabric. It is believed that this actually outdated type of armor offered better protection against arrow fire by Indians and at the same time better mobility than the plate armor common at the time. They actually covered a smaller part of the body.
The scale armor lost its raison d'etre even faster than the plate armor.
It was not until the First World War that armaments were increasingly experimented with, and types of armor that were reminiscent of scale armor were also tested - but without any notable success. More recently, something similar has been created for protective vests in the form of the Dragon Skin Body Armor .
literature
- Ortwin Gamber: Weapons and Armaments of Eurasia. Early and ancient times: a handbook on the history of weapons. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig 1978, ISBN 3-7814-0185-5 , pp. 118, 188, 422.
- Evgeniĭ Vasilʹevich Chernenko: The protective weapons of the Scythians. Prehistoric bronze finds. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08659-5 .
- Hans-Günter Buchholz, Joseph Wiesner: Warfare. Volume 1, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1977, ISBN 3-525-25404-0 , pp. 92, 95, 96.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jazeran. In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon. Volume 10, Leipzig 1907, p. 214. (online at: zeno.org )
- ↑ Token against Indian arrows. In: Der Spiegel . 2/2014, p. 115.
Web links
- http://www.schuppenpanzer.de/ Building instructions and sources of supply for modern replicas