Welcome to the final instalment of the highly informative series: Ancient Composite Armor by guest writer Jake Ganor. (For background, see parts 1, 2, 3.) Ancient linen and paper armor were vulnerable to water, pests, and decay, yet both the Greeks and Chinese relied on them, especially at sea. Rather than strengthening the armor, adhesives likely served as protective sealants. This article explores the theory that resins and lacquers preserved these materials, shedding light on an enduring historical mystery.
Though the Greeks might have employed glue in the construction of their linen breastplates, and though we know for certain that the Chinese used glues and lacquers in the laminated construction of some types and models of paper armor, we don’t know why.
As stated in the third article in this series, it’s very unlikely that glue would improve the
protective properties of linen and paper armor much, if at all. We know from modern armor that even the strongest modern resin is of very little benefit where stab-proofing is concerned. If anything, resin is more likely to actually degrade the protective properties of linen or paper – especially on a weight basis, for, over an entire breastplate, the weight of the resin itself can be very substantial.
I would put forth an alternate hypothesis.
Though always cheaper than metal armor, paper armor and linen breastplates were still very costly, and yet they were prone to degrade quite rapidly – which is why no linothorax has survived, and why examples of paper armor are few and far between.
To illustrate the problem, if in rather dark strokes, a historian of the Northern Song dynasty once wrote:
“I once saw the southern soldiers suffer bitterly in the campaign against Liao. It was like
a festering wound in the cold, where the flesh grows slowly. Paper armor became
infested with maggots in the rain, the hills were small graves with frost-covered
bones, and the river dried up, leaving behind rotten fish. The common people had no
place to weep, and the population of households dwindled day by day.”
(Song Wenjian, Volume 22, Part 80.)
It’s well known that paper and linen armor both swell and slowly begin to disintegrate when
exposed to excessive amounts of water, and that they’re fine meals for vermin – rodents, moths, beetles and their maggot-like larvae, etc. As any librarian or fabric expert will corroborate, they’re also not immune from fungal and bacterial attack.
It’s also well attested, as I noted in a recent article on spider silk armor, that the silk breastplates and collars that WWI armies experimented with “degraded rapidly as trench matériel.” Silk, like linen and paper, is of course an organic and biodegradable material.
What’s also striking is that linen breastplates were frequently used by Greek Hoplites who
traveled by sea – linen-cuirassed Ajax perished beneath the waves – and paper armor is, in
China, traditionally associated with the Navy, with coastal defense, and with pirates.
An interesting 13th century account indicates this quite clearly:
“One day in the 12th year of the Jiading reign of the Southern Song Dynasty (1219 AD),
the central Privy Council received an official document from Zhen Dexiu, the prefect of
Quanzhou. Zhen Dexiu, who had recently been promoted due to his exceptional political
achievements as Deputy Commissioner of Jiangnan Donglu, had been appointed prefect
of Quanzhou to address the threat of rampant pirates in the coastal areas. At that time,
Quanzhou was severely plagued by pirate raids, and the increasingly serious problem of
coastal defense had left the once-thriving Quanzhou port in ruins. The number of foreign
merchant ships visiting the port each year had dwindled to just three or four.
“In his report to the court, Zhen Dexiu not only outlined the current situation in Quanzhou
but also stressed the importance of restoring and strengthening coastal defenses. He
made a special request to the Privy Council, stating: ‘The military equipment for our
forces is mostly adequate, but what the Navy truly needs is paper armor. Currently, we have 100 sets of iron armor, of which we will keep half and trade the other 50 sets for paper armor for our forces.’
. . .
“What’s even more surprising is that Zhen Dexiu’s enemies – the pirates – are also using
paper armor. In a report from the esteemed Southern Song official Hong Shi, he
mentioned that the pirates mostly used paper armor for protection. On one occasion,
while searching their ships, they found as many as ten sets of paper armor aboard a
single vessel.
“. . .By 1270 AD, the Chinese Navy set up a dedicated paper armor production branch.”
The Chinese naval tradition of paper armor continued into the 16th century. The famed pirate-hunter Qi Jiguang was a strong proponent of arming his marines with paper-cotton armor. And in the 1621 Wubei Zhi or “Treatise on Armament Technology” – famous for its depictions of that era’s Chinese weapons – naval commander Mao Yuanyi noted that “the best choice for foot soldiers is paper armor, mixed with a variety of silk and cloth.”
Given these contexts, it is inconceivable that organic armor panels – whether linen or paper– were left unsealed against water and decay.
Thus, under the circumstances, resin or lacquer would likely have been used as a sealant, not as a ply-bonding agent. Both the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Chinese had relatively easy access to waterproof lacquers and resin sealants, which in Greece were an indispensable part of shipbuilding among other things, and which in China were the foundation for much of their finished woodwork. We also know, for a certainty, that the Chinese used lacquered leather armor very extensively, from earliest antiquity into almost contemporary times. Countless examples of lacquered armor, throughout Asia, have survived. (The Japanese eventually came to lacquer all of their metal armor as a rust prevention strategy.)
In addition to keeping out moisture, resins and lacquers are typically repellent to insects. There isn’t a moth or a grub alive that won’t feast on wet linen or damp paper, but they’ll generally avoid eating anything coated in lacquer.
Also, using a resin or lacquer as a sealant – as opposed to as a bonding agent between each ply of material – requires far less of that resin or lacquer. It would be inherently less costly, and would add less weight to the finished product.
The Greeks may have used beeswax in place of resin, or in addition to resin – but resin is
plainly superior and far longer-lasting, so it is unlikely that beeswax was their only method of surface-treating linen breastplates.
Bottom line: It’s extremely likely that both the Greeks and the Chinese used lacquer or resin in the construction of ancient armor – but it’s most likely that they used these materials as coatings or sealants to extend the usable lifespan of what would otherwise be very short-lived articles of armor.
This is all, of course, speculative. Unless new sources or new relics come to light, there’s no
way of telling how linothorax was constructed. But this hypothesis can, perhaps, be the
springboard for an investigation into certain existing pieces of Chinese paper armor, some of which are known to be lacquered. The hypothesis predicts that there will be an excess of
lacquer on all exterior surfaces, and little or no lacquer or resin between plies or inside paper scales.
If this hypothesis is correct, or deemed plausible, then both the linen breastplate and paper
armor only incidentally resemble modern composites. They’re more akin to waterproofed
materials. The modern composite – the fiber-resin laminate – is indeed something new.
