The ancient world's kevlar

Cheers Adam, interesting read.

 

Thanks for the very interesting article and for bumping this thread, Adam. The original story is interesting, too. The link has been changed, though. Here is the new link to the story:

http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/linothorax-alexander-great-armor.htm

 

On a related, subject... Years ago when I lived in eastern Colorado I became interested in plains Indian weapons and tools. An Arapaho friend in Denver told me about shields used by the various plains tribes. They used rawhide from the neck of the buffalo - most references will say the hump, but the neck actually had the thickest skin and was used for shields. Rawhide of course, can be wetted and shaped over a frame, then dried to a very hard material. A man might have two shields, an everyday shield of one layer and a designated war shield two layers thick that was much heavier. The rawhide would be painted with various personal symbols.
Over the rawhide was a brain-tanned leather cover that one rarely sees in museums. The leather cover actually served two purposes - one was to keep the rawhide dry in wet conditions, but it was also sometimes left on the shield in a fight for added protection.

Anyway, by all accounts, these rawhide shields (particularly the heavier war shields) would stop arrows and were also effective against many firearms, though I wouldn't want to test that. Likely they stopped lighter black powder balls, but I doubt they were very effective against the heavier and faster rounds that showed up after the American civil war.