V. THE PROBLEM OF PLATE ARMOR 



"The skilful leader subdues the enemy's troops without 

 any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege 

 to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy 

 operations in the field. With his forces intact he will dis- 

 pute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing 

 a man, his triumph will be complete." 



Sun-tse, Art of War (translation of Lionel Giles). 



We had occasion to allude to plate armor 1 in the chapter on defensive 

 armor of the Han period, stating that in all probability it existed in the 

 China of those days ; we referred also to its possible occurrence among the 

 armor worn by the cataphracti of the ancients, and figured a Siberian 

 petroglyph from the Yenisei representing a mounted lancer clad with 

 such mail. We now propose to discuss this problem in detail, — a problem 

 of fundamental historical importance, as it reveals ancient relations 

 between many peoples of Asia, and touches also the question as to the 

 connection of Asiatic with American cultures. Classical and other 

 archaeologists have not yet ventilated this problem, apparently for the 

 only reason that they did not sharply enough discriminate between 

 the various types of body armor. "Scale armor" was the catchword 

 under which everything of this sort was pressed together. 2 But plate 

 armor must be strictly differentiated from scale armor as a special type, 

 which sprang up independently. The laminas forming plate armor 

 are rectangular and flat, and mutually lashed together; and in the same 

 manner the parallel horizontal rows are connected one with another. 

 Such connection is absent in scale armor, in which each scale is individ- 

 ually treated and attached to a background; the background is in this 

 case a necessity, while in plate armor it is dispensable. The laminae 

 of scale armor are arranged like roofing-tiles or the scales of a fish, 

 one placed above another; while in plate armor the laminae, as a rule, 

 are disposed one beside another, or but slightly overlapping. Plate 



1 The word ' 'plate armor' ' is used here throughout in the sense adopted by American 

 ethnologists, — armor consisting of horizontal rows of narrow, rectangular laminae 

 (regardless of the material), the single laminae or plates being mutually lashed to- 

 gether by means of thongs, and the various rows being connected in a similar man- 

 ner. Students of European armor usually take the term "plate armor" to designate 

 armor composed of large sheets of metal closely enveloping chest and back. This 

 type is here styled "sheet armor." 



2 In England, plate armor is usually styled "scale armor." E. H. Minns (Scythians 

 and Greeks, p. 74, Cambridge, 1913), for instance, speaks of "a system of thongs 

 plaited and intertwined as in Japanese and Tibetan scale armor." This, of course, is 

 plate armor; scales are never intertwined. 



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