The Problem of Plate Armor 259 



armor is more flexible and lighter in weight, and hence recommended 

 itself to all nations who became acquainted with it. Plate armor can be 

 easily donned over or beneath any garment, and does away with the 

 uncomfortable leather jerkin. For this reason it proved the most fa- 

 vorite and enduring type of armor in China. It was capable of develop- 

 ment and refinement, while scale armor always remained stationary. 



It is the ethnologists who were the first to place us on the track of 

 this subject; and there are chiefly two scholars, Friedrich Ratzel and 

 Walter Hough, who took the leadership in this research. Our best course 

 will therefore be to begin by reviewing their studies of the subject, and 

 then to see how their results compare with the new material now at our 

 disposal. 



Friedrich Ratzel 1 was the first to make a thorough investigation 

 of the geographical dissemination of plate armor, as far as the material 

 was accessible in his time (1886), among the tribes of north-western 

 America and the Chukchi, also on the Society, Austral, and Gilbert 

 Islands in the South Sea. He was particularly struck by the observa- 

 tion that such armor was lacking in other parts of the world, and that its 

 appearance in the Arctic regions was out of proportion to the general 

 poverty of culture there prevailing. The belief in its independent 

 existence among these peoples conflicted with his axiom that the in- 

 dolence of inventive power is a fundamental law of the primitive stages 

 of ethnic life. In order to explain the phenomenon of plate armor, 

 Ratzel had recourse to Japan, where he deemed armor had reached its 

 greatest development, 2 and where the threads of ancient tribal connec- 

 tions indicated by these peculiar productions ran together; and he 

 believed in a direct contact between Japan and the north-west coast of 

 America in the distribution of plate armor, to the exclusion of the 

 Asiatic Continent. Although the result of this investigation is seemingly 

 historical, the methods and the point of view pursued are purely geo- 

 graphical; and an historical mind cannot fail to notice the weak points 

 of this argumentation. The existence of plate armor in Japan, for in- 

 stance, is merely accepted as a fact given in space, without inquiry 

 into its historical foundation and development, and without the knowl- 

 edge of corresponding objects in China and other parts of Asia being 

 much older. 



1 Uber die Stabchenpanzer und ihre Verbreitung im nordpazifischen Gebiet 

 {Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1886, pp. 181-216; 

 3 plates). 



2 H. Schurtz (Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 355) has adopted the opposite point 

 of view, and interprets that the curious plate armor characteristic of the peoples of 

 the Bering Sea has served as model for the Japanese armor made from lacquered 

 pieces of leather, as certain traditional decorations in the former also seem to prove. 

 This opinion is out of the question, for technical and historical reasons. 



