Personally I believe this is a type of scale armor not lamellar as the Chinese already have lamellar. If this was a superior form of lamellar it would have completely replaced the older type. I believe that hole in the piece was used to rivet it to a backing, which could be fabric. But more intriguingly the backing could be mail, which would explain why mail was seldom seen in Chinese art. The advantage of riveting mountain scale to mail is you no longer need a thick fabric gambeson underneath. This would be useful in humid environments. The mountain scale provides impact protection while mail provide penetration protection. The Romans used a similar armor called lorica plumata. It was expensive and used by high ranking officers as mountain pattern armor was as well. That statue with the warrior wearing mail on this thighs and mountain pattern on his shoulders makes sense if he opted to leave the mountain pattern plates off his thighs because he’s more likely to take impact blows on this upper body. It would also explain the disappearance of this type of armor in the age of gunpowder, as any kind of mail would be hazardous to the wearer if shot.
You are correct l! Mountain pattern scales exist in triangle rectangle and hexagon patterns which match asian chainmail patterns. (See Kusari) European 4 in 1 chainmail had to be imported from Iran so Chinese made simplified mail which cannot block stabbing. This was solved by riveting scales in the holes
I am currently building a mountain pattern armour out of brass and leather. Some things I've noticed about it: -It's not terribly flexible. It doesn't transfer force as well as maille does. The folding up of the leg panels for off-horse use is not possible, as far as I can tell. -It's much more difficult to make than maille. I've made a maille haubergeon and it is a far more forgiving material to work with. Granted, I did not rivet it. -I see no reason to choose shan wen jia over any other material, other than that it looks really cool. -Looking really cool it does. It's why I started this project in the first place. I'd be more than happy to share some of my research and progress with you if you're interested.
This. I find it a shame it wasn't brought up in his comparison video since brigandine is already pretty obscure in popular culture despite how widespread it was across the world.
@@possumsam2189 It certainly is the closest analogue to our tactical vests yeah. Ironic how it and gambeson (closest precursor to kevlar vests) are both way less well known than chainmail and especially plate - I'm guessing they just don't look as charismatic to the average observer.
I'm really glad to see you're doing such an in depth exploration of this very interesting type of armor. Can't wait to see the outcome. I'm looking forward to seeing it come to life in metal so we can get some real scientific answers. Best of luck, Metatron!
"Somebody made Mountain pattern armour using unknown metal, shooted it from unknown type of bow using unknown type of arrows from unknown distance and it didnt worked so they came to belive it is not functional amour". Yeah very convincing.
(1) So called Mountain Pattern Armor (山纹铠*) appears in too many PHYSICAL STATUES in too many places to be an artist's impression. (2) It is NOT a lamellar Armor. It is ALWAYS shown fastened to a thick slab of something and always bordered. (3) It is an IRON or STEEL age armor. Nothing from the spring-autumn/warring-states (春秋战国 -- chun1 qiu1 zan4 guo2) period and if it was bronze it would have survived. (4) It appears to be a constructed into panels commonly used on on the shoulder, torso and/or upper thigh skirts. (5) The argument against its effectiveness is that it is not mass efficient and traps arrows in the valleys. (6) This is reinforced by historical paintings that show warriors with arrows stuck in such panels like porcupines. -- I DO NOT BELIEVE that Mountain Pattern Armor is ever Mountain Patterned to begin with. Nobody has actually seen a naked individual mountain patterned element. I believe that it is constructed of equilateral Y shaped plates with three holes on each prong. Why? Because the mountain shape doesn't actually interlock worth a damn and offers little to no resistance against being spread apart by a penetrating projectile or spear point. With three holes on each prong and a hidden rivet through it is actually stronger than riveted mail albeit less mass efficient due to the large amounts of overlap. If the rivet doesn't break, the armor elements won't actually spread apart much, arrows diverted into the valleys may not penetrate much deeper than half an inch to an inch before coming to a stop against the padding. This is actually preferable to stopping it outright as the deceleration over a short distance of the projectile is probably more comfortable for the wearer. An overlapping Y geometry will spread the force across three rivets and three plates. That is stronger than European mail which does so across one rivet and one ring, or Japanese mail which is mostly 7 interlocking rings but all butted. -- *It is never referred to as 山纹甲 (shan1 wen2 jia3) except by modern lay persons. In Chinese, 甲 (jia3) refers to soft armor (Leather or fabric) whereas metallic armor is always called 铠 (kai3). The term 铠甲 (kai2 jia3) is sometimes used as an all encompassing term for protective garment of yore but also for armors that uses both hard and soft elements.
@Catch_Me_If_You_Can It is speculation because all it proves is that it CAN BE DONE or that if is done a given way it may perform as such, it doesn't establish if it is actually done or done that way.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "European mail which does so across one rivet and one ring," since most of european chainmail was interlocking, every ring was interlocking with atleast 4 neighbours, some had more, wich would spread the impact force would it not? Perhaps i missunderstand.
Dwight Looi The real questions we should be asking are, when those illustration of the Armour in question where made? Many illustrations, statues, arts, etc of European, Indian and Chinese are were created centuries after the alleged date of the event/character. For example, many ancient warriors of the troyan war where depicted as using the classic greek hoplite leather/metal cuirass when in reality they would have worn bronze armor like the one called "Dendra panoply". Or renaissance paintings depicting roman soldiers in plate armour. So this was a failure of accuracy from the part of the illustrator/artist. The earliest form of Chinese armour we have solid evidence of is the ones found in the statues inside the tomb of Qin Shi Huang was lamellar. In fact it is possible, just like many other inventions like fireworks, compass, paper money, that lamelar armor was invented in China and exported elsewhere to the world. The pieces that made this lamelar armour were not always made of leather, but from many materials like ceramics, bones and metal. Hence, why the illustrators portrait them as such and looking like scale/mail armor. Look at iconography of the byzantine empire (6th century) and look that their lamelar armour is stylized to the point that it give the impression that this is was a unique kind of armor. When in reality it was just lamelar such as this i.redd.it/cgtod11cjp521(dot)jpg
@Catch_Me_If_You_Can That is a little different. WE KNOW how historical chainmail is constructed. We simply reconstructed it to see if swords can slash through it. We DON'T KNOW how mountain pattern armor is constructed. Speculating on one method of construction and proving that it can be made this way is not proof that it is made this way. That makes it speculation.
If it is scale that is added over a gambeson like padding made of silk it could form an effective protection. the scales would protect against cuts and blunt trauma while the quilted silk would protect more against piercing and arrows (silk being very tough and one of the first materials used in modern bullet proof vests).
A long time ago, somewhere in China: "yaaawn... Man I seriously underestimated representing mail on statues. Just the legs took me 6 months! Dad was right ... I should just stick to mountain pattern armour representation for the rest."
there are other statues where mail was also in the gaps in the armor like the shoulders under the pauldrons the gap between upper arm and fore arm and neck area as well. not just the legs.
@@r6guy I was just joking buddy. Don't take it to heart. Regardless, archeology and history suffer severely of observer bias, so it is difficult to make objective statements about a lot of subjects in them. I meant no disrespect, just raising awareness through comedy
I made my own experiments in 1.2mm thick aluminum with Shan Wen Kai a while ago. Still not thorough enough to call decisive, but Looking at that statue with the tied up scale skirts I concluded that it should be flexible enough to fold back on it'self and to form the triangular fold like shown on the statue. The common pattern with those extra flanges to 'lock' the scales in seems to originate from an enthusiast having an idea and deciding that was how it must have been. I found such a flange makes the network too stiff to flex as shown in depictions. So my next experiment was without these flanges, which improved flexibility a bit, then i hammered them into dished shapes and that variant i found to be as flexible as implied and folded appropriately. I agree with the people here saying it is likely scale paired with a backing, given the thick borders i see it with, and the flexible fabric-like behaviour implied.
Fantastic video! It amazes me how just a few centuries of Qing dynasty rule was enough for the entire knowledge of how mountain patterned armor was produced to be forgotten, since we don’t even know how to classify it. One must wonder if it would have continued in use had a native Han Chinese dynasty replaced the Ming instead of the Manchu.
If you look at late Ming armor, they mostly abandoned the mountain scale armor and switch to a type of armor very similar to a brigandine. The Qing basically ended up adopting the same type of armor and kept it until armies are all equip with guns and they just wore the heavy cotton exterior coat and abandoned the metal plates, similar idea to a western buff coat.
@@zedz4397 for how common guan dao/ naginata like weapons were in northern Asia, they get very little research. would love to see something about them and the Korean equivalent.
As a Chinese and an amateur military historian / weapon enthusiast I agree with your said opinion in all , Chinese Armor in general is from BC time to early 20th century always layered , and there were ancient text describing any metal scale or laminar armor being worn as outer layer & needed to be backed with hard leather backing which both serve as buffer and also structurally give it a better overall construction base. I don't quite recall which text but there were ancient text mentioned all kind of scale / laminar type armor that's made in metal and then treated , but also for some infantry and light cavalry , they can be made with Bamboo, and its usually a solid piece of bamboo instead of hollowed out at the back or at least had a certain thickness to it and that could be the yellow laminar armor as shown in the painting ( and there were many actual historical sample of Bamboo scale and laminar armor) the same varied construction with different material were likely employed on all kind of scale and laminar armor, including mot likely mountain style armor, as well as feather scale ( scale made to resemble a feather / quill ) armor. in fact even as late as early 20th century, mixed bamboo / Rattan armor or mix of metal / bamboo / rattan armor constructed in the scale / laminar manner were still mainstay in some of the army units, especially those need need not go into close combat ( archer's , infantry lancers, military police ) Metal mountain style armor are likely reserved for the elite unit and the upper echelons as the complexity of the construction pretty much mean its costly . And as the painting goes, the construction is likely a scale with a thick leather backing rimmed with thick silk binding at the edge . I highly suggest you look into making this mountain type armor in Steel ( which is what documented as it should be ) but also it could be of Bamboo. As they are they would be used not as a total cover all armor but a supplementary to a suite of layered armor but worn on the outside to give protection especially against arrows flying across battlefield, but due to the shape of the scale itself also glancing cuts and hacks from close combat. Usually these the outermost layer are not designed to fend against a dedicated heavy thrusting / hacking attack, that would be the job for the shield; but its functional in close combat against say a sword thrust - the combined scale, with its " usually " leather backing and the underlying armor is what's its for and likewise for most close combat
Wonderful video, Metatron! I've also studied what little academic and recreationist data is available on this armor, and the one thing that I've read that is often glossed over, is that amongst Chinese soldiers layered silk was the preferred 'padding' to be worn under armor, or even by itself in the absence of hastily donned armor. Multiple layers of silk are incredibly strong, particularly against piercing/stabbing against the weave itself, and were ascribed in some accounts to prevent penetration by arrows. I've read (but seen no testing) that if worn in conjunction with mountain pattern, that the initial 'channeling' from the plates combined with the silk layers underneath to prevent wounding, and that a 'yank' on the fabric underneath was enough to eject the spent projectile from the puncture. It might be purely myth at that point, but it's still interesting to consider. Anyhow, I love watching your passion for the study, and I look forward to seeing more!
This is pretty neat. I recently saw this type of armour used in the historical Tang Dynasty show, "The Longest Day in Chang'An". The show does a good job of trying to appear historical. It might be interesting to review the show's military historicity.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the reproduction by an anonymous “they” turned out to have been cut from off the shelf sheet metal, akin to the guy who tested the protective qualities of readily available sheet copper, then concluded that the bronze plate armor of Ancient Greece must have been ceremonial.
While I certainly have no claim to being an expert on Chinese armor, looking to the pattern from the eyes of a blacksmith, it looks to me like it would certainly offer good protection against slashing attacks. I see no place for a blade to catch, and i personally believe it would likely shed such blows like water cascading off a steep roof...
Awesome video, it would also be cool if we got some videos on Byzantine armor. It seems that the information regarding Byzantine armor quickly runs dry after the first crusade.
Well true, mail was more popular than any other armor in the Byzantine Empire. It is kind of a myth or misconception that lamellar armor was the most popular in the Byzantine Empire, but that might have been true early on though.
Also I've been doing some research on the mountain pattern armor or also called star pattern armor, and it seems it's pretty bad against projectiles. Let's put in this perspective, chainmail with gamberson performed way better against arrows in crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor. And it has to do with the projectile like an arrow or a crossbow Bolt hits the point of the armor and that point guides the projectile in between the gaps of the Mountain Armor period so instead of driving pointy attacks away from vulnerable places it guided to a vulnerable place! The armor seem to be used mostly in ceremonial practices that I think the Chinese mother used it in the battlefield for some reason.
@@landsknecht8654 No doubt the chainmail over gambeson armor was the most common in the Byzantine Empire, and throughout the entire Balkans until the 1500s, but we know from both textual and pictorial evidence that the Byzantines did in fact wear other types of armor, especially in the late 14th and first half of the 15th centuries. I'd love to see a video on the segmented cuirass they wore (I think it's called a klivanion?) I'd also love to see a video on Byzantine plate armor and how it differs from other European plate armor of the time. Also on some Byzantine frescoes we see what looks like a feather pattern armor, I've always wondered what that was, some sort of gambeson? Or maybe a jupon worn over the armor like a close fitting tabard? And also they wore some interesting helmets on some frescoes and icons that look almost like helmets from the Hellenistic period of Greek history but made into steel instead of bronze.
Simple armour design but looks heavy, I guess that’s why it was used mounted. I would love too see a vid on Japanese archers, their armour and gear. I also recommend Nioh for your twitch gaming, it is a difficult ( dark souls level) game but is based heavily on Japanese folklore and military history (Edo period I believe) with lots of armour and weapon variations.
1. What is commonly known as mountain pattern is called chainmail in military manuals. This was mistakenly called mountain pattern during 1970s by a dr Yang. 2. Mountain pattern armor follows Japanese chainmail weave patterns. 3. Ancient statues wearing mountain pattern armor show chain mail rings and rivets 4. Ancient statues are found wearing the “naked” chainmail without the mountain scales 5. Rare statues exist wearing BOTH chainmail And chainmail with the scales 6. Newest 2018 Chinese patents show the scales makes the chainmail bend only in one direction, hardening on impact and acting like plate armor
Some statues use some kind of artists interpretation that show it like plates but there are other contradictory statues where the artist has clearly gone to some painstaking effort that show an intricate chainmail weave in the mountain pattern. Some LARP people call this weave 'elven chainmail' but that is in fact what mountain pattern chainmail armour is. Basically, it is not a lamellar armour.
I think it is maille. There is a pattern called Hoodoo Hex Sheet that strongly resembles the moutain pattern in chinese art depictions and would be almost as flexible as some statues seem to suggest it would be.
Personally I find that the so called "experts" when they haven't got a real answer, ALWAYS FALL BACK ON …."IT WAS CERIMONIAL". …….. They never say "I don't know what it was used for." To them it ….."MUST BE CERIMONIAL"!
It’s the structure of the mountain pattern, it creates fulcrums where each scale joins and that just concentrates the force of the arrows into the gaps. Conventional scales over lap so you can have arrows glancing off. I see mountain pattern as a fancy version of chain main, fine for slashing weapons but not piercing, but probably stronger against blunt.
Metatron this guy made a panel which he just cut out of some thin brass or bronze and found a way to rivet it to leather and even made a lion or dragons head, mounted it at the top, made some lovely trim and the made it into the shap of a shoulder gaurd. It was obviously decorative and just was meant to give some idea of how laborious it probably was. I think if done properly it must have afforded some good protection but I think this guys idea was just to give some idea of the patience and skill necessary to make it and the artistic value of it. It was reasonably long and the guy didn't make any claims or even talk over much but just went about the business of his craft with some chines and occasionally classical music in the back ground. I'll just go and look what it was called and then reply to my own comment with the name if anyone is interested in checking it out.
When's your next Q&A? I want to make sure I can catch it because I'd love to chat with you in person (or at least, as close to in-person as I can get).
I know what I’m about to suggest might be different from what you do but it’s still kinda related... Can you explain how a Calvary charge works. I never understood... is the front of the charge basically cannon fodder and if the front riders and horses fall, wouldn’t the entire charge be cancelled because of the horses tripping over each other
Modern History TV talks about it a bit at some point, cant remember exactly. but hes definitely one to check out if youre interested in all the knightly stuff, mainly horses. So he said that heavy cavalry would ride knee to knee, so close to each other that the horses would basically brace each others sides. And this solid front of plated heavy horses crashing at high speed is what broke any but the most well disciplined of infantry shield walls. You would still rather not charge a pike block head on, but it could still be done with higher losses. He also mentions how the charge would pick up speed at the last minute, only going full gallop right before the impact for a proper charge. Earlier cav needed an anvil however. you would never want to charge spears head on. only flank them after they are already engaged with your infantry.
In 14th century firearms had not been important. The flemish, swiss and english infantry could defeat mounted knights by using a place for battlefield, where it was difficult or impossibe for the mounted knights to charge. So in this age cavalry was dangerous for infantry. By the time of pike and shot the adantage came to infantry and in the flintlock musket and bayonet time with linear tactic the infantry mostly won. So the army commanders waited with the charge of the heavy cavalry until they saw a weak point in the enemy battle line. A charge to such a weak point sometimes was the start of a won battle.
Most of the breaking of the enemy in a cavalry charge should happen before they ever hit. This is why disciplined infantry could hold off cavalry charges all day long on their fighting sides (not when flanked); as long as they don't quail and largely break before the horses even hit, the horses are probably going to come off the worse in terms of acceptable losses trying to just force their way through a fighting formation. A cavalry charge against the main enemy infantry force is, provided said infantry are heavy or spear laden enough, one of the riskiest decisions to make in the battle. If you fuck it up, your creme de la creme heavy cavalry are going to get their shit beat in when the infantry don't break and start spitting out dead horses and nobles. You can fit like eight to ten men in the same space a horse occupies. If the cavalry don't break the enemy, they need to leave, NOW, or die. The first thing people always need to relearn about warfare is that morale comes first.
Interesting video! I look forward to seeing a possible iron reproduction of your interpretation, though at this stage, I am holding out for some archeological evidence because so little can be verified.
Thank you Rafu-san. Learned some thing new every time I watch your videos. This time: the chinese character for mountain. Looks better than chain mail. Shinobi, instead of ninja, last week.
There's paintings and statues that mountain pattern armour appeared together with mail armour in same person. This probably means it's different armour
This. Mountain armor was probably crafted by skilled armorsmiths who know how make beautiful armor but never caught on with the regular armies because it was too expensive to make. Just like how rich nobles and knights have better quality armors while the rest gets the cheap plain plates
in fact, you don't really need a lot of tools if you wanna build that. you just need an drill (and the good spikes for piercing through metal) an plier made for cutting sheet-metal, an non-cutting plier (to shape pieces and make them convex), and some 0.75 to 1mm thick mild steel plates (you can get all of that in some hardware store). use the pliers to cut the pieces into the steel plates, just pierce the hole into each piece with the drill, and then, use the non-cutting plier to bend the pieces ,then, you can take some rope and link the pieces together.
Hello Metatron Do you have messurements for the individual scales? Im an apprentice welder, and have acces to a lot of machinery and would be able to quickly make hundreds of them. #lasercutters
What are your thoughts about this, I think mountain pattern armor could be a mesh made from weaved metal wires, the way some modern cut-resistant gloves are. That could explain why in some depiction it appears more flexible than others, because the backing material and amount of wire would determine the rigidity. All the surviving Qing dynasty examples of this pattern have been embroidery on textile.
It would be nice if someone made a small sample of mountain pattern in steel and bronze, backed them with silk or padded fabric, then tried shooting with them with a few different arrowheads from different ranges. I have no idea what the draw weights or materials of contemporary bows or crossbows were at the time. I gather that the repeating crossbows were rather light and that the horn horse bows were rather heavy. in any case it would still probably be quite effective against slashes and blunt impacts from polearms. Another question is would it stop a thrust from a finely pointed contemporary polearm?
They did and it performed terribly! They was different sets from when I remember reading and they all perform terribly against projectiles at least, I don't know about melee weapons yet.
I've been doing some research on the mountain pattern armor or also called "star pattern armor", and it seems it's very bad against projectiles. Let's put in this perspective; chainmail with gamberson performed way better against arrows & crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor. It has to do with the projectile like an arrow or a crossbow bolt hits the point of the Mountain pattern scale and that point guides the projectile in between the gaps of the Mountain Armor! So instead of driving pointy attacks away from vulnerable places it guides it to a vulnerable place! It seems like a terrible piece of armor. (Chainmail with gamberson at least absorb the attacks.)
This could easily been produce by laser or water cutting metal boards. For the convex form a Punch could be done to improve the the production time. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punching The punch and die would be quite easy to make may be a Fablab could help.
Id like to see you play "Baba is you", its an unconventional puzzle game and i think it would be fun to see you trying to figure it out, even if there arent any swords in it
The biggest problem with the annonymus test, is that they dont make a sturdy rim on the side. Off course it get shifted easily. i also believe it was sew on a leather backing like a scale armor. But looking at the design. I do believe its main function was to againts slash n some stab. Rather than piercing arrow.
The archangel who watches over us through the form of energy and is the gatekeeper of divinity..... Had to subscribe to you as I read your user name. Bless all, fellow traveler.
Moment you said that someone said: "It was probably ceremonial", I started to chuckle. Ohhh boi the memories of a rant - it's probably ceremonial are still alive in my brain :DDDDDDDDD
I think a pattern like this is more likely: www.mailleartisans.org/gallery/gallerydisplay.php?key=6103 www.mailleartisans.org/gallery/gallerydisplay.php?key=6105 The desigen of the individual lames is much simpler to manufactur and the construktion is equaly strong in each direction of attack. Though the interlocking of the other pattern should be very strong in one direction, only one rivet per scale seams a bit weak to me.
What would make the matter even more confusing is that the Chinese do depict a weave of mail that look like Mountain Pattern armor except made with a combination of rings. It is certainly different from Mountain Pattern as both form armor had been depicted in a single suit of armor in a statue. Now there is 2 possible ways that Mountain Pattern armor was constructed: 1. It is made of plate. 2. It is made of hexagonal rings. Of course, we could see that tgere are other pattern of armor other than the Mountain shape armor, some of which cannot be made with rings.
Mountain scale looks so cool. There's a Chinese armor smith here on youtube who made a full mt scale set and it looks super legit. I definitely want to collect one if I get the chance! I wonder why it's so rare though? Guess no one has dug up the right tomb yet. Maybe this was an armor made only for officers and nobilty?
@@louirudy670 Unfortunately this is the only vid I could find, and it's in mandarin - which I don't speak. Metatron shouldn't have trouble understanding though haha. th-cam.com/video/-uy4D_KhMDo/w-d-xo.html
About the arrow tests as well, what is the arrowhead shaped like , what is it made of, and how was it made? If armor piercing tips hadn't been developed at the same time as the armor, then the test needs to account for that. Your suspicion that the pattern was a part of a layered system could make sense, even if the next layer was more mountain pattern. Since we don't have any archaeological examples and we see the pattern as part of artwork, including statues of warriors, I suspect that it is indeed a scale mail and that the backing would often bee thin leather or cloth, likely silk layers. Good for stopping damage, but after soaking up tons of sweat when in use, rotting over time would have ruined the material. For thin pieces of metal to be functional armor and even preferred for some areas of lower mobility, you are looking are either work hardening on copper and bronze pieces or tempered steel like what is used in a sword. We are talking metal as thin as European scale mail or a coat of mail. It would be cheaper than plate, but block blows almost as well if double layered with a good under layer. Not as good at absorbing the shock of a strike from a melee weapon, but better than mail. I think it served as an option for the average warrior to investing in actual plate mail for parts of the armor that didn't need to flex much and would be plate mail if the warrior could afford it. This really need some real experimental archaeology. Maybe we set up a crowdfund for doing this?
It was probably the most expensive type of armor to produce, so you only see depictions of high ranking soldiers wearing that. Also if it wasn't more protective than other types of armor why would they use it
There's a reason why it wasn't we use very widely. The armor was terrible against projectiles. I've been reading and doing some research on this mountain pattern armor also known as star-shaped armor it seems it was performing terribly against arrows and crossbow bolts. Keep it short and let's put it in perspective Chain-mail with a gambison performed way better against arrows & crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor.
@@landsknecht8654 that might be because no one knows how it was actually constructed. of course the weakness seems to be the grove where three pieces meet, if an arrow hits there it pushes the scales away. My guess is there was a more sophisticated interlocking of the pieces and they weren't just simply riveted onto a leather foundation
@@spitalhelles3380 There can be some truth to what you said, just as butted mail was terrible and not correct. The thing is though there is a big design flaw on the mountain pattern armor/star pattern armor. A lot if times when a pointy object hits the star scale on the armor the star scale guides the arrow or bolt to the most vulnerable spot of the armor! So even it was constructed perfectly this is a huge legitimately design flaw on the armor! This is due to the shape of the the scales as well as how they are set on the armor. Chain-mail with ag gamberson absorbs attacks very well, European plate armor deflects attack away from vulnerable spots and the body, the Mountain pattern armor guide the energy into the most vulnerable spots of armor. I can easily see this problem with a point of a European lance doing the same were the Mountain pattern armor grabs the lance forcing it into it self. So far from what I understand this is the worst sophisticated metal armor ever created.
You do have archeological evidence, not having a sample of something doesn't mean multiple depiction in tomb burials and arts don't count, these too are archaeological evidence.
Thank you META - the building of this leads my mind to reproducing this for a test for myself. Anvils and Lead shot leather pads should make a nice look - a little color and all facets are covered. Cheers
I have to say, if the mountain plates are really like that, it would do poorly against arrows, since all scale armors are not good against piercing. The problem of those testings are really just we don't really know how it is connected, and how each mountain plate really looks like.
This debate reminds me of the mythbusters episode about the bulletproof iPhone. It turned out the iPhone was worn on top of a ballistic vest in the story. Adam asked the question, what really stopped the bullet, Kevlar or about 6mm of cheap aluminium? What’s really stopping the arrow, the cool pattern of scales or the leather the scales are attached to? 🤔🙄 Not trying to be mean spirited, I just don’t think the pattern of scales is absorbing the impact. I’d be happy to be proved incorrect, but it’s an armour pattern that’s almost always shown sewn to leather and it evidently didn’t spread or last very long compared to scale, ring, and lamellar armour.
Well a lot of things disappear into history when the people who knows how to make them dies with their knowledge. There is so much we used to know as human beings and now are long lost, or only very few know to this day. One such example is roman plate armor, square Shields and the pilum.
I've seen a mountain scale armor replica being properly encased in leather backing and stopped arrows shot from a 30-pound bow from a 1-2m distance on a Chinese forum. I just couldn't find it right now.
I would love to see a practical test of this pattern, made in a type of steel the Chinese artisans would have had access to in the period, backed by a reasonable facsimile of a typical armor base layer used in the period.
long time ago the set photo i seen that "suppose" to to be a test of the armor have the have show what metal was use it was aluminum soft drink can .. and the arrow that was shot was precess the seam ... that may be the photo that was being pass around the part that the armor was shot .
Metatron, I'm curious do you think that the visual representation of 山文铠 can actually just be an artistic motif that took a life of it's own rather than a specific type of armor?
Even if it can be pierced by arrows, what exactly would that prove? There are many historical armors that can be pierced with archery equipment of their time. Doesn't mean it can't protect from melee weapons.
Could have some sort of religious symbolic meaning that was shared across multiple cultures. Possibly a representation of the hand mudras that was shared across Buddhism and Hinduism? (Middle and Ring Finger Up All The Rest Down)
Its amazing to me that the soldiers all look like fish , Even the same colors as a fish and scales. Makes me think someone saw fish scales and thought to himself ..."hey ! thats armor !"
Nice Armour pattern. Regarding effectiveness, you can’t just shoot arrows at it. Perhaps it was designed to be effective against swords, ok against pikes, and superb against broad head arrows. Or perhaps it was meant to be a cheap but mostly effective armor. We don’t know. So a full test would involve all period weapons, and in all weather conditions. And it would involve actually making the armor to figure out the price in comparison to other period weapons.
Greetings Metatron Thank you for your research and your work to share it to us :) For the mountain patern plate Could it be a mark for social or religious statut? Or perhaps a folklor distinction for a heroe or else? I remember that statue or painting about gods, heroes and other folkloric characters get this kind of armor in Vietnam.
it could be used by generals to distinguish them from other soldiers. Recently, a Japanese mountain scale armor of Edo Period was auctioned. tieba.baidu.com/photo/p?kw=%E7%9B%94%E7%94%B2&flux=1&tid=6192550575&pic_id=253d08087bf40ad10149890a592c11dfa8ecce74&pn=1&fp=2&see_lz=1&red_tag=k2648924821
I think some people wrote it was ceremonial because of your rant video about it must have been ceremonial. Not because they actually think it really was ceremonial...
Purely from looking at your cardboard reconstruction, it seems like that mesh would be difficult to thrust a sword or dagger through but I'm not sure about heavier thrusts (namely spears and arrows), it's relying purely on the resistance to bending of one of those arms. Furthermore, even if this isn't an issue, it seems like it would catch any point in one of those corners and channel the full force through into the wearer - it looks like it has no deflective capability at all. I'm not trying to say it's non-functional or ceremonial but (surprise, surprise) it probably was less effective than the more common types of armour.
It is better actually. The multiple different meshes serve to dissipate blunt impact blows better than plate and stop glancing blows from lances. As for arrows, this armour is normally padded with cotton (or mail or additional lamellar judging from the statues) and/or worn with a silk jacket underneath.
@@possumsam2189 I'm not sure about maces but surely lances/spears would get caught in those junctions, just like arrows? Either way, I'll stand by my point that if it wasn't common it probably wasn't as good as the armours that were (namely lamellar and brigandine).
@@Robert399 It was pretty common for Officers or Elite troops from the Tang Dynasty all the way to the Ming (When it was replaced by Brigandine due to the prevalence of guns during that time). The Mountain patterned (or Star-studded) armour reached its peak during the Song Dynasty during the Heavily-armoured clashes between the Jin elite 'Iron Pagoda' (Which numbered in the thousands) and Song Heavy infantry/cavalry.
3:07 How is this less labor intensive than mail? This is individual plate needed to cut? cast? forge? into this unconventional shape. Mail is just metal wire that get linked together, no?
Depends on the kind of mail. Are the rings ends butted against each other? Are they riveted? Are they twisted? etc. What pattern are they linked in? What metal are they made out of? etc. For the most part, mail tends to require finer smithing skills than lamellar plates and offers inferior protection to lamellar or plate that’s made of the same material. The main advantages over lamellar and plate is that it’s lighter, more flexible and has a lower material cost.
@@genghiskhan6809 I think most of it is time, how long would it take to fore the iron into something small enough to be drawn out into wire, let alone the time to draw out the wire? Mail is just time consuming and time is money after all
China historically since the Han dynasty has the most advanced forge technologies and it's very possible that they can mass produce these and other weapons in some ancient assembly line of forges.
@@Jake-dh9qk I've seen the device they used to make wires. It is a very simple device but was not used in China. I guess nobody really thought of using wires to make an armor prior to that, and it has to do with armor making tradition as well. I've seen people claiming lamellar was used because it was cheap to produce and mass fit the soldiers so anything related to China was labeled "cheap". This argument has two problems. First, even nobles and generals wore lamellar or scale armors. Second, to produce lamellar was actually not that cheap: Song dynasty records indicated a piece of lamellar armor was equivalent to a standard soldier's 8 years salary and could buy a large tract of farmland able to make several families live comfortably.
Personally I believe this is a type of scale armor not lamellar as the Chinese already have lamellar. If this was a superior form of lamellar it would have completely replaced the older type. I believe that hole in the piece was used to rivet it to a backing, which could be fabric. But more intriguingly the backing could be mail, which would explain why mail was seldom seen in Chinese art.
The advantage of riveting mountain scale to mail is you no longer need a thick fabric gambeson underneath. This would be useful in humid environments. The mountain scale provides impact protection while mail provide penetration protection. The Romans used a similar armor called lorica plumata. It was expensive and used by high ranking officers as mountain pattern armor was as well.
That statue with the warrior wearing mail on this thighs and mountain pattern on his shoulders makes sense if he opted to leave the mountain pattern plates off his thighs because he’s more likely to take impact blows on this upper body.
It would also explain the disappearance of this type of armor in the age of gunpowder, as any kind of mail would be hazardous to the wearer if shot.
Johny Ricco, wow, that sounds plausible and awesome!🤟🏻🤟🏻
You are correct l! Mountain pattern scales exist in triangle rectangle and hexagon patterns which match asian chainmail patterns. (See Kusari)
European 4 in 1 chainmail had to be imported from Iran so Chinese made simplified mail which cannot block stabbing. This was solved by riveting scales in the holes
I am currently building a mountain pattern armour out of brass and leather. Some things I've noticed about it:
-It's not terribly flexible. It doesn't transfer force as well as maille does. The folding up of the leg panels for off-horse use is not possible, as far as I can tell.
-It's much more difficult to make than maille. I've made a maille haubergeon and it is a far more forgiving material to work with. Granted, I did not rivet it.
-I see no reason to choose shan wen jia over any other material, other than that it looks really cool.
-Looking really cool it does. It's why I started this project in the first place.
I'd be more than happy to share some of my research and progress with you if you're interested.
Are you still planning on doing a dedicated video on the Chinese Brigandine?
This. I find it a shame it wasn't brought up in his comparison video since brigandine is already pretty obscure in popular culture despite how widespread it was across the world.
@@perrytran9504 It is sad because Brigandine is unironically the direct precursor to the modern military tactical vest.
@@possumsam2189 It certainly is the closest analogue to our tactical vests yeah. Ironic how it and gambeson (closest precursor to kevlar vests) are both way less well known than chainmail and especially plate - I'm guessing they just don't look as charismatic to the average observer.
I SUMMON THE RED EYE BLACK DRAGON! ON ATTACK MODE!
I'm really glad to see you're doing such an in depth exploration of this very interesting type of armor. Can't wait to see the outcome. I'm looking forward to seeing it come to life in metal so we can get some real scientific answers. Best of luck, Metatron!
"Somebody made Mountain pattern armour using unknown metal, shooted it from unknown type of bow using unknown type of arrows from unknown distance and it didnt worked so they came to belive it is not functional amour".
Yeah very convincing.
Someone shoot a 50bmg and it went through all historical armor. It is clear evidence armor is non functional.
(1) So called Mountain Pattern Armor (山纹铠*) appears in too many PHYSICAL STATUES in too many places to be an artist's impression.
(2) It is NOT a lamellar Armor. It is ALWAYS shown fastened to a thick slab of something and always bordered.
(3) It is an IRON or STEEL age armor. Nothing from the spring-autumn/warring-states (春秋战国 -- chun1 qiu1 zan4 guo2) period and if it was bronze it would have survived.
(4) It appears to be a constructed into panels commonly used on on the shoulder, torso and/or upper thigh skirts.
(5) The argument against its effectiveness is that it is not mass efficient and traps arrows in the valleys.
(6) This is reinforced by historical paintings that show warriors with arrows stuck in such panels like porcupines.
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I DO NOT BELIEVE that Mountain Pattern Armor is ever Mountain Patterned to begin with. Nobody has actually seen a naked individual mountain patterned element. I believe that it is constructed of equilateral Y shaped plates with three holes on each prong. Why? Because the mountain shape doesn't actually interlock worth a damn and offers little to no resistance against being spread apart by a penetrating projectile or spear point. With three holes on each prong and a hidden rivet through it is actually stronger than riveted mail albeit less mass efficient due to the large amounts of overlap. If the rivet doesn't break, the armor elements won't actually spread apart much, arrows diverted into the valleys may not penetrate much deeper than half an inch to an inch before coming to a stop against the padding. This is actually preferable to stopping it outright as the deceleration over a short distance of the projectile is probably more comfortable for the wearer. An overlapping Y geometry will spread the force across three rivets and three plates. That is stronger than European mail which does so across one rivet and one ring, or Japanese mail which is mostly 7 interlocking rings but all butted.
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*It is never referred to as 山纹甲 (shan1 wen2 jia3) except by modern lay persons. In Chinese, 甲 (jia3) refers to soft armor (Leather or fabric) whereas metallic armor is always called 铠 (kai3). The term 铠甲 (kai2 jia3) is sometimes used as an all encompassing term for protective garment of yore but also for armors that uses both hard and soft elements.
@Catch_Me_If_You_Can Experimental Aracheology is a nicer term for SPECULATION.
@Catch_Me_If_You_Can It is speculation because all it proves is that it CAN BE DONE or that if is done a given way it may perform as such, it doesn't establish if it is actually done or done that way.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "European mail which does so across one rivet and one ring," since most of european chainmail was interlocking, every ring was interlocking with atleast 4 neighbours, some had more, wich would spread the impact force would it not? Perhaps i missunderstand.
Dwight Looi The real questions we should be asking are, when those illustration of the Armour in question where made? Many illustrations, statues, arts, etc of European, Indian and Chinese are were created centuries after the alleged date of the event/character. For example, many ancient warriors of the troyan war where depicted as using the classic greek hoplite leather/metal cuirass when in reality they would have worn bronze armor like the one called "Dendra panoply". Or renaissance paintings depicting roman soldiers in plate armour.
So this was a failure of accuracy from the part of the illustrator/artist. The earliest form of Chinese armour we have solid evidence of is the ones found in the statues inside the tomb of Qin Shi Huang was lamellar. In fact it is possible, just like many other inventions like fireworks, compass, paper money, that lamelar armor was invented in China and exported elsewhere to the world.
The pieces that made this lamelar armour were not always made of leather, but from many materials like ceramics, bones and metal. Hence, why the illustrators portrait them as such and looking like scale/mail armor. Look at iconography of the byzantine empire (6th century) and look that their lamelar armour is stylized to the point that it give the impression that this is was a unique kind of armor. When in reality it was just lamelar such as this i.redd.it/cgtod11cjp521(dot)jpg
@Catch_Me_If_You_Can That is a little different. WE KNOW how historical chainmail is constructed. We simply reconstructed it to see if swords can slash through it. We DON'T KNOW how mountain pattern armor is constructed. Speculating on one method of construction and proving that it can be made this way is not proof that it is made this way. That makes it speculation.
If it is scale that is added over a gambeson like padding made of silk it could form an effective protection. the scales would protect against cuts and blunt trauma while the quilted silk would protect more against piercing and arrows (silk being very tough and one of the first materials used in modern bullet proof vests).
A long time ago, somewhere in China: "yaaawn... Man I seriously underestimated representing mail on statues. Just the legs took me 6 months! Dad was right
... I should just stick to mountain pattern armour representation for the rest."
there are other statues where mail was also in the gaps in the armor like the shoulders under the pauldrons the gap between upper arm and fore arm and neck area as well. not just the legs.
@@r6guy I was just joking buddy. Don't take it to heart. Regardless, archeology and history suffer severely of observer bias, so it is difficult to make objective statements about a lot of subjects in them. I meant no disrespect, just raising awareness through comedy
Dammit Metatron, I was just about to go to bed
Playing this in bed to to falls asleep to some juice random knowledge.
I made my own experiments in 1.2mm thick aluminum with Shan Wen Kai a while ago. Still not thorough enough to call decisive, but Looking at that statue with the tied up scale skirts I concluded that it should be flexible enough to fold back on it'self and to form the triangular fold like shown on the statue. The common pattern with those extra flanges to 'lock' the scales in seems to originate from an enthusiast having an idea and deciding that was how it must have been. I found such a flange makes the network too stiff to flex as shown in depictions. So my next experiment was without these flanges, which improved flexibility a bit, then i hammered them into dished shapes and that variant i found to be as flexible as implied and folded appropriately.
I agree with the people here saying it is likely scale paired with a backing, given the thick borders i see it with, and the flexible fabric-like behaviour implied.
Fantastic video! It amazes me how just a few centuries of Qing dynasty rule was enough for the entire knowledge of how mountain patterned armor was produced to be forgotten, since we don’t even know how to classify it. One must wonder if it would have continued in use had a native Han Chinese dynasty replaced the Ming instead of the Manchu.
If you look at late Ming armor, they mostly abandoned the mountain scale armor and switch to a type of armor very similar to a brigandine. The Qing basically ended up adopting the same type of armor and kept it until armies are all equip with guns and they just wore the heavy cotton exterior coat and abandoned the metal plates, similar idea to a western buff coat.
i am a simple man, when i see metatron has a new video, i press like
Luv me Metatron
Luv his content
Ate supposed ceremonial objects
Simple as.
Chinese n Japanese Weapons comparison
Good idea
when it comes to swords,there are swords that almoust make no difference except the pokeswords and the daos from my knowledge
@@metatronyt Katana vs Tang Dao(唐刀),
Naginata(薙刀) vs Guan Dao(关刀)
Jumonji Yari(十文字槍) vs Ji(戟)
@@zedz4397 for how common guan dao/ naginata like weapons were in northern Asia, they get very little research. would love to see something about them and the Korean equivalent.
@@mcRydes pretty sure that the Korean equivalent must be derived from the ancient China
As a Chinese and an amateur military historian / weapon enthusiast I agree with your said opinion in all , Chinese Armor in general is from BC time to early 20th century always layered , and there were ancient text describing any metal scale or laminar armor being worn as outer layer & needed to be backed with hard leather backing which both serve as buffer and also structurally give it a better overall construction base. I don't quite recall which text but there were ancient text mentioned all kind of scale / laminar type armor that's made in metal and then treated , but also for some infantry and light cavalry , they can be made with Bamboo, and its usually a solid piece of bamboo instead of hollowed out at the back or at least had a certain thickness to it and that could be the yellow laminar armor as shown in the painting ( and there were many actual historical sample of Bamboo scale and laminar armor) the same varied construction with different material were likely employed on all kind of scale and laminar armor, including mot likely mountain style armor, as well as feather scale ( scale made to resemble a feather / quill ) armor.
in fact even as late as early 20th century, mixed bamboo / Rattan armor or mix of metal / bamboo / rattan armor constructed in the scale / laminar manner were still mainstay in some of the army units, especially those need need not go into close combat ( archer's , infantry lancers, military police )
Metal mountain style armor are likely reserved for the elite unit and the upper echelons as the complexity of the construction pretty much mean its costly . And as the painting goes, the construction is likely a scale with a thick leather backing rimmed with thick silk binding at the edge .
I highly suggest you look into making this mountain type armor in Steel ( which is what documented as it should be ) but also it could be of Bamboo. As they are they would be used not as a total cover all armor but a supplementary to a suite of layered armor but worn on the outside to give protection especially against arrows flying across battlefield, but due to the shape of the scale itself also glancing cuts and hacks from close combat. Usually these the outermost layer are not designed to fend against a dedicated heavy thrusting / hacking attack, that would be the job for the shield; but its functional in close combat against say a sword thrust - the combined scale, with its " usually " leather backing and the underlying armor is what's its for and likewise for most close combat
Wonderful video, Metatron! I've also studied what little academic and recreationist data is available on this armor, and the one thing that I've read that is often glossed over, is that amongst Chinese soldiers layered silk was the preferred 'padding' to be worn under armor, or even by itself in the absence of hastily donned armor. Multiple layers of silk are incredibly strong, particularly against piercing/stabbing against the weave itself, and were ascribed in some accounts to prevent penetration by arrows. I've read (but seen no testing) that if worn in conjunction with mountain pattern, that the initial 'channeling' from the plates combined with the silk layers underneath to prevent wounding, and that a 'yank' on the fabric underneath was enough to eject the spent projectile from the puncture. It might be purely myth at that point, but it's still interesting to consider. Anyhow, I love watching your passion for the study, and I look forward to seeing more!
This is pretty neat. I recently saw this type of armour used in the historical Tang Dynasty show, "The Longest Day in Chang'An". The show does a good job of trying to appear historical. It might be interesting to review the show's military historicity.
I love the face you made when saying "some think it could be ceremonial"
I wouldn’t be surprised if the reproduction by an anonymous “they” turned out to have been cut from off the shelf sheet metal, akin to the guy who tested the protective qualities of readily available sheet copper, then concluded that the bronze plate armor of Ancient Greece must have been ceremonial.
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
While I certainly have no claim to being an expert on Chinese armor, looking to the pattern from the eyes of a blacksmith, it looks to me like it would certainly offer good protection against slashing attacks. I see no place for a blade to catch, and i personally believe it would likely shed such blows like water cascading off a steep roof...
Awesome video, it would also be cool if we got some videos on Byzantine armor. It seems that the information regarding Byzantine armor quickly runs dry after the first crusade.
Well true, mail was more popular than any other armor in the Byzantine Empire. It is kind of a myth or misconception that lamellar armor was the most popular in the Byzantine Empire, but that might have been true early on though.
Also I've been doing some research on the mountain pattern armor or also called star pattern armor, and it seems it's pretty bad against projectiles.
Let's put in this perspective, chainmail with gamberson performed way better against arrows in crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor. And it has to do with the projectile like an arrow or a crossbow Bolt hits the point of the armor and that point guides the projectile in between the gaps of the Mountain Armor period so instead of driving pointy attacks away from vulnerable places it guided to a vulnerable place!
The armor seem to be used mostly in ceremonial practices that I think the Chinese mother used it in the battlefield for some reason.
@@landsknecht8654
No doubt the chainmail over gambeson armor was the most common in the Byzantine Empire, and throughout the entire Balkans until the 1500s, but we know from both textual and pictorial evidence that the Byzantines did in fact wear other types of armor, especially in the late 14th and first half of the 15th centuries. I'd love to see a video on the segmented cuirass they wore (I think it's called a klivanion?) I'd also love to see a video on Byzantine plate armor and how it differs from other European plate armor of the time. Also on some Byzantine frescoes we see what looks like a feather pattern armor, I've always wondered what that was, some sort of gambeson? Or maybe a jupon worn over the armor like a close fitting tabard? And also they wore some interesting helmets on some frescoes and icons that look almost like helmets from the Hellenistic period of Greek history but made into steel instead of bronze.
Simple armour design but looks heavy, I guess that’s why it was used mounted.
I would love too see a vid on Japanese archers, their armour and gear.
I also recommend Nioh for your twitch gaming, it is a difficult ( dark souls level) game but is based heavily on Japanese folklore and military history (Edo period I believe) with lots of armour and weapon variations.
This is fantastic . Thanks again from a noble One.
You can shoot through mail armor with bows and crossbows. That doesn't make it useless.
1. What is commonly known as mountain pattern is called chainmail in military manuals. This was mistakenly called mountain pattern during 1970s by a dr Yang.
2. Mountain pattern armor follows Japanese chainmail weave patterns.
3. Ancient statues wearing mountain pattern armor show chain mail rings and rivets
4. Ancient statues are found wearing the “naked” chainmail without the mountain scales
5. Rare statues exist wearing BOTH chainmail And chainmail with the scales
6. Newest 2018 Chinese patents show the scales makes the chainmail bend only in one direction, hardening on impact and acting like plate armor
Some statues use some kind of artists interpretation that show it like plates but there are other contradictory statues where the artist has clearly gone to some painstaking effort that show an intricate chainmail weave in the mountain pattern. Some LARP people call this weave 'elven chainmail' but that is in fact what mountain pattern chainmail armour is. Basically, it is not a lamellar armour.
Love him or hate him, he spittin straight facts.
I think it is maille. There is a pattern called Hoodoo Hex Sheet that strongly resembles the moutain pattern in chinese art depictions and would be almost as flexible as some statues seem to suggest it would be.
Personally I find that the so called "experts" when they haven't got a real answer, ALWAYS FALL BACK ON …."IT WAS CERIMONIAL". …….. They never say "I don't know what it was used for." To them it ….."MUST BE CERIMONIAL"!
yea that bugs me
It's the equivalent to the anthropology "I don't know" intellectual shrug of "Possibly ritualistic or religious."
it is possible in this case though, most of people in those paintings are royal guards.
@@hanliu3707 royal "CERIMONIAL GUARDS"? ……. OR ROYAL GUARDS?
@@dockmasterted Royal guards, but that dosen't mean the armor is not cerimonial, and also, cerimonial armors can be functional too.
It’s the structure of the mountain pattern, it creates fulcrums where each scale joins and that just concentrates the force of the arrows into the gaps. Conventional scales over lap so you can have arrows glancing off. I see mountain pattern as a fancy version of chain main, fine for slashing weapons but not piercing, but probably stronger against blunt.
Metatron this guy made a panel which he just cut out of some thin brass or bronze and found a way to rivet it to leather and even made a lion or dragons head, mounted it at the top, made some lovely trim and the made it into the shap of a shoulder gaurd. It was obviously decorative and just was meant to give some idea of how laborious it probably was. I think if done properly it must have afforded some good protection but I think this guys idea was just to give some idea of the patience and skill necessary to make it and the artistic value of it. It was reasonably long and the guy didn't make any claims or even talk over much but just went about the business of his craft with some chines and occasionally classical music in the back ground. I'll just go and look what it was called and then reply to my own comment with the name if anyone is interested in checking it out.
Redmat kirkhof. Chinese mountain armour part 1
I love you videos Metatron
When's your next Q&A? I want to make sure I can catch it because I'd love to chat with you in person (or at least, as close to in-person as I can get).
Always on the 15th and at 3 pm centrale time
@@metatronyt Ah, so it's monthly, not weekly? I got that confused, apparently.
@@kevinnorwood8782 Twitch streaming games Is gonna be weekly on Sundays mostly, TH-cam Q&A Is gonna be monthly every 15th :)
Anything about Dragon Age armor or Alaskan native armor?
I know what I’m about to suggest might be different from what you do but it’s still kinda related...
Can you explain how a Calvary charge works. I never understood... is the front of the charge basically cannon fodder and if the front riders and horses fall, wouldn’t the entire charge be cancelled because of the horses tripping over each other
Soul Knight this please!
Modern History TV talks about it a bit at some point, cant remember exactly. but hes definitely one to check out if youre interested in all the knightly stuff, mainly horses.
So he said that heavy cavalry would ride knee to knee, so close to each other that the horses would basically brace each others sides. And this solid front of plated heavy horses crashing at high speed is what broke any but the most well disciplined of infantry shield walls. You would still rather not charge a pike block head on, but it could still be done with higher losses. He also mentions how the charge would pick up speed at the last minute, only going full gallop right before the impact for a proper charge.
Earlier cav needed an anvil however. you would never want to charge spears head on. only flank them after they are already engaged with your infantry.
It's cavalry you idiot.
In 14th century firearms had not been important. The flemish, swiss and english infantry could defeat mounted knights by using a place for battlefield, where it was difficult or impossibe for the mounted knights to charge. So in this age cavalry was dangerous for infantry. By the time of pike and shot the adantage came to infantry and in the flintlock musket and bayonet time with linear tactic the infantry mostly won. So the army commanders waited with the charge of the heavy cavalry until they saw a weak point in the enemy battle line. A charge to such a weak point sometimes was the start of a won battle.
Most of the breaking of the enemy in a cavalry charge should happen before they ever hit. This is why disciplined infantry could hold off cavalry charges all day long on their fighting sides (not when flanked); as long as they don't quail and largely break before the horses even hit, the horses are probably going to come off the worse in terms of acceptable losses trying to just force their way through a fighting formation. A cavalry charge against the main enemy infantry force is, provided said infantry are heavy or spear laden enough, one of the riskiest decisions to make in the battle. If you fuck it up, your creme de la creme heavy cavalry are going to get their shit beat in when the infantry don't break and start spitting out dead horses and nobles. You can fit like eight to ten men in the same space a horse occupies. If the cavalry don't break the enemy, they need to leave, NOW, or die.
The first thing people always need to relearn about warfare is that morale comes first.
Just remember if all else fails, IT MUST BE CEREMONIAL
or it could be higher-ranking officer armor. You never know.
Interesting video! I look forward to seeing a possible iron reproduction of your interpretation, though at this stage, I am holding out for some archeological evidence because so little can be verified.
Your Chinese pronunciation is really good, I approve of this as a native Chinese speaker. Where did you learn it?
Teach me plz, wô want to learn hanyù
@@chriswiddajonathan8941 pretty sure that wo is vietnamese
Christian wid da jonathan In 拼音，我 is pronounced as wo.
@@6principlesforcartography61 I meant the sign at the top of wo
Thank you Rafu-san. Learned some thing new every time I watch your videos.
This time: the chinese character for mountain. Looks better than chain mail.
Shinobi, instead of ninja, last week.
There's paintings and statues that mountain pattern armour appeared together with mail armour in same person. This probably means it's different armour
I would consider mountain pattern armor is served as aesthetic improved lamellar armor for user that is in higher rank of army.
This. Mountain armor was probably crafted by skilled armorsmiths who know how make beautiful armor but never caught on with the regular armies because it was too expensive to make. Just like how rich nobles and knights have better quality armors while the rest gets the cheap plain plates
in fact, you don't really need a lot of tools if you wanna build that. you just need an drill (and the good spikes for piercing through metal) an plier made for cutting sheet-metal, an non-cutting plier (to shape pieces and make them convex), and some 0.75 to 1mm thick mild steel plates (you can get all of that in some hardware store). use the pliers to cut the pieces into the steel plates, just pierce the hole into each piece with the drill, and then, use the non-cutting plier to bend the pieces ,then, you can take some rope and link the pieces together.
I’m with you on this as usual Metatron
Metatron can you do a video about lamellar used by nomadic peoples?
Hello Metatron Do you have messurements for the individual scales? Im an apprentice welder, and have acces to a lot of machinery and would be able to quickly make hundreds of them. #lasercutters
many people in China had attempted to make these, for example, tieba.baidu.com/p/6392282168?traceid= you can see their dimensions
Fantastic job METATRON!!
What are your thoughts about this, I think mountain pattern armor could be a mesh made from weaved metal wires, the way some modern cut-resistant gloves are. That could explain why in some depiction it appears more flexible than others, because the backing material and amount of wire would determine the rigidity. All the surviving Qing dynasty examples of this pattern have been embroidery on textile.
Metatron as always, an interesting upload
It would be nice if someone made a small sample of mountain pattern in steel and bronze, backed them with silk or padded fabric, then tried shooting with them with a few different arrowheads from different ranges. I have no idea what the draw weights or materials of contemporary bows or crossbows were at the time. I gather that the repeating crossbows were rather light and that the horn horse bows were rather heavy. in any case it would still probably be quite effective against slashes and blunt impacts from polearms. Another question is would it stop a thrust from a finely pointed contemporary polearm?
They did and it performed terribly!
They was different sets from when I remember reading and they all perform terribly against projectiles at least, I don't know about melee weapons yet.
I've been doing some research on the mountain pattern armor or also called "star pattern armor", and it seems it's very bad against projectiles.
Let's put in this perspective; chainmail with gamberson performed way better against arrows & crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor.
It has to do with the projectile like an arrow or a crossbow bolt hits the point of the Mountain pattern scale and that point guides the projectile in between the gaps of the Mountain Armor! So instead of driving pointy attacks away from vulnerable places it guides it to a vulnerable place! It seems like a terrible piece of armor.
(Chainmail with gamberson at least absorb the attacks.)
One of the great mysteries of historical armor!
If you think that scale mail is a type of mail, I don't see why anyone wouldn't think this is a type of mail.
This could easily been produce by laser or water cutting metal boards. For the convex form a Punch could be done to improve the the production time. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punching The punch and die would be quite easy to make may be a Fablab could help.
Id like to see you play "Baba is you", its an unconventional puzzle game and i think it would be fun to see you trying to figure it out, even if there arent any swords in it
It's beautiful as well.. Very impressive.
Change damaged scales would be pretty harder than conventional scales.
The biggest problem with the annonymus test, is that they dont make a sturdy rim on the side. Off course it get shifted easily. i also believe it was sew on a leather backing like a scale armor.
But looking at the design. I do believe its main function was to againts slash n some stab. Rather than piercing arrow.
The archangel who watches over us through the form of energy and is the gatekeeper of divinity.....
Had to subscribe to you as I read your user name. Bless all, fellow traveler.
;)
Moment you said that someone said: "It was probably ceremonial", I started to chuckle. Ohhh boi the memories of a rant - it's probably ceremonial are still alive in my brain :DDDDDDDDD
Especially the deep, slow version.
@@Vlad_Tepes_III Sometimes you feel that you gotta enlighten the boys by playing it to them.
Or you contemplate about using it as a lullaby :D
That pattern is a nightmare to render artistically a
I agree. And it also seems like solid armor. And in different places... I agree.
I think a pattern like this is more likely:
www.mailleartisans.org/gallery/gallerydisplay.php?key=6103
www.mailleartisans.org/gallery/gallerydisplay.php?key=6105
The desigen of the individual lames is much simpler to manufactur and the construktion is equaly strong in each direction of attack. Though the interlocking of the other pattern should be very strong in one direction, only one rivet per scale seams a bit weak to me.
Still, i miss ye olde hairy Metatron!
It's growing back :)
Rock! - oh two others beat me to a post, and no paper or scissors, ok now on to the entertainment - because it must be Ceremonial!
What would make the matter even more confusing is that the Chinese do depict a weave of mail that look like Mountain Pattern armor except made with a combination of rings.
It is certainly different from Mountain Pattern as both form armor had been depicted in a single suit of armor in a statue.
Now there is 2 possible ways that Mountain Pattern armor was constructed:
1. It is made of plate.
2. It is made of hexagonal rings.
Of course, we could see that tgere are other pattern of armor other than the Mountain shape armor, some of which cannot be made with rings.
I would like to see a video about tibetan weapons and armor.
I believe the Mountain pattern armor was for swordplay when arrows were not expected to be defended against
Mountain scale looks so cool. There's a Chinese armor smith here on youtube who made a full mt scale set and it looks super legit. I definitely want to collect one if I get the chance!
I wonder why it's so rare though? Guess no one has dug up the right tomb yet. Maybe this was an armor made only for officers and nobilty?
Can you post a link to that smiths channel?
@@louirudy670 Unfortunately this is the only vid I could find, and it's in mandarin - which I don't speak. Metatron shouldn't have trouble understanding though haha. th-cam.com/video/-uy4D_KhMDo/w-d-xo.html
About the arrow tests as well, what is the arrowhead shaped like , what is it made of, and how was it made? If armor piercing tips hadn't been developed at the same time as the armor, then the test needs to account for that.
Your suspicion that the pattern was a part of a layered system could make sense, even if the next layer was more mountain pattern. Since we don't have any archaeological examples and we see the pattern as part of artwork, including statues of warriors, I suspect that it is indeed a scale mail and that the backing would often bee thin leather or cloth, likely silk layers. Good for stopping damage, but after soaking up tons of sweat when in use, rotting over time would have ruined the material.
For thin pieces of metal to be functional armor and even preferred for some areas of lower mobility, you are looking are either work hardening on copper and bronze pieces or tempered steel like what is used in a sword. We are talking metal as thin as European scale mail or a coat of mail. It would be cheaper than plate, but block blows almost as well if double layered with a good under layer. Not as good at absorbing the shock of a strike from a melee weapon, but better than mail. I think it served as an option for the average warrior to investing in actual plate mail for parts of the armor that didn't need to flex much and would be plate mail if the warrior could afford it.
This really need some real experimental archaeology. Maybe we set up a crowdfund for doing this?
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
It was probably the most expensive type of armor to produce, so you only see depictions of high ranking soldiers wearing that. Also if it wasn't more protective than other types of armor why would they use it
There's a reason why it wasn't we use very widely. The armor was terrible against projectiles. I've been reading and doing some research on this mountain pattern armor also known as star-shaped armor it seems it was performing terribly against arrows and crossbow bolts. Keep it short and let's put it in perspective Chain-mail with a gambison performed way better against arrows & crossbow bolts than the mountain pattern armor.
@@landsknecht8654 that might be because no one knows how it was actually constructed. of course the weakness seems to be the grove where three pieces meet, if an arrow hits there it pushes the scales away. My guess is there was a more sophisticated interlocking of the pieces and they weren't just simply riveted onto a leather foundation
@@spitalhelles3380 There can be some truth to what you said, just as butted mail was terrible and not correct.
The thing is though there is a big design flaw on the mountain pattern armor/star pattern armor. A lot if times when a pointy object hits the star scale on the armor the star scale guides the arrow or bolt to the most vulnerable spot of the armor! So even it was constructed perfectly this is a huge legitimately design flaw on the armor! This is due to the shape of the the scales as well as how they are set on the armor. Chain-mail with ag gamberson absorbs attacks very well, European plate armor deflects attack away from vulnerable spots and the body, the Mountain pattern armor guide the energy into the most vulnerable spots of armor.
I can easily see this problem with a point of a European lance doing the same were the Mountain pattern armor grabs the lance forcing it into it self.
So far from what I understand this is the worst sophisticated metal armor ever created.
Your argumeantr wit Caeasar was hillarious.
The mountain pattern looks good for hiding the lacing behind it.
You do have archeological evidence, not having a sample of something doesn't mean multiple depiction in tomb burials and arts don't count, these too are archaeological evidence.
Do a video about Mycenaean armor
Check out my "origins of plate armour" ;)
@098765 Craper and by the way what did you give me
@@metatronyt hello
@098765 Craper by the way what's the you Barber my friend
@098765 Craper are you on Manwich
Thank you META - the building of this leads my mind to reproducing this for a test for myself. Anvils and Lead shot leather pads should make a nice look - a little color and all facets are covered. Cheers
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
You should get a metal stamping press to make those for you, making them manually will take an eternity
Hi metatron can you make a video about 宋朝八色刀？in here dao(刀) doesn't mean the sabre or saber, but polearms or halberd-like polearms
I have to say, if the mountain plates are really like that, it would do poorly against arrows, since all scale armors are not good against piercing. The problem of those testings are really just we don't really know how it is connected, and how each mountain plate really looks like.
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
@@dongf2618 不确定你看懂我的意思没，现在没出图就不能确定甲片连接方式，没连接方式就不能确定强度，metatron视频里的那种本质上算是鱼鳞甲的改进版，比纯粹的鱼鳞要强一些但还是会有怕穿刺的弱点，我确实见过一些用其他连接方式的山纹，防穿刺能力确实是强一些，但是就是我说的，没出土甲片谁都不知道这东西到底怎么连接的
@@hanliu3707 管他一样不一样，第一能用 第二差不离就行了 只要这两点能做到 那么就是好盔甲
@@dongf2618 怎么说呢，玩玩肯定没问题，但是按考古考证的标准差不离肯定是不够的了
This debate reminds me of the mythbusters episode about the bulletproof iPhone. It turned out the iPhone was worn on top of a ballistic vest in the story. Adam asked the question, what really stopped the bullet, Kevlar or about 6mm of cheap aluminium?
What’s really stopping the arrow, the cool pattern of scales or the leather the scales are attached to? 🤔🙄
Not trying to be mean spirited, I just don’t think the pattern of scales is absorbing the impact. I’d be happy to be proved incorrect, but it’s an armour pattern that’s almost always shown sewn to leather and it evidently didn’t spread or last very long compared to scale, ring, and lamellar armour.
Well a lot of things disappear into history when the people who knows how to make them dies with their knowledge. There is so much we used to know as human beings and now are long lost, or only very few know to this day. One such example is roman plate armor, square Shields and the pilum.
I've seen a mountain scale armor replica being properly encased in leather backing and stopped arrows shot from a 30-pound bow from a 1-2m distance on a Chinese forum. I just couldn't find it right now.
will you make a Korean/Mongolian/Vietnamese armor follow-up? I would honestly be intrigued by it
It was ceremonial, definately. Yep, very proffessional, that's what actual archeologists always say.
I would love to see a practical test of this pattern, made in a type of steel the Chinese artisans would have had access to in the period, backed by a reasonable facsimile of a typical armor base layer used in the period.
here is the test
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
long time ago the set photo i seen that "suppose" to to be a test of the armor have the have show what metal was use it was aluminum soft drink can .. and the arrow that was shot was precess the seam ... that may be the photo that was being pass around the part that the armor was shot .
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
@@dongf2618 thank for the new vid :D this one works
Ming Dynasty, best dynasty
Looking at the armor, I think it might be simpler to mount it to fabric because of the distance between holes.
Metatron, I'm curious do you think that the visual representation of 山文铠 can actually just be an artistic motif that took a life of it's own rather than a specific type of armor?
Even if it can be pierced by arrows, what exactly would that prove? There are many historical armors that can be pierced with archery equipment of their time. Doesn't mean it can't protect from melee weapons.
Could have some sort of religious symbolic meaning that was shared across multiple cultures. Possibly a representation of the hand mudras that was shared across Buddhism and Hinduism? (Middle and Ring Finger Up All The Rest Down)
They tried shooting arrows to it. It worked and was not penetrated by the arrow.
m.th-cam.com/video/mdTNf9gxvrk/w-d-xo.html
How are you not overly addicted to Kingdom come?? Games got me hooked and outside of the gaming restrictions, it’s pretty accurate.. I think.
Hi Metatron,
what do you think about playing "Life is Feudal"?
Best regards from South Tyrol (Alto Adige)
Its amazing to me that the soldiers all look like fish , Even the same colors as a fish and scales. Makes me think someone saw fish scales and thought to himself ..."hey ! thats armor !"
Nice Armour pattern.
Regarding effectiveness, you can’t just shoot arrows at it. Perhaps it was designed to be effective against swords, ok against pikes, and superb against broad head arrows. Or perhaps it was meant to be a cheap but mostly effective armor. We don’t know. So a full test would involve all period weapons, and in all weather conditions. And it would involve actually making the armor to figure out the price in comparison to other period weapons.
www.bilibili.com/video/av40738365?from=search&seid=280239806555109086
wic wong Nice :) i can see that it is definitely a good armor vs arrows :) thank you for sharing :)
When will we see late Roman/ byzantine armor.
Greetings Metatron
Thank you for your research and your work to share it to us :)
For the mountain patern plate
Could it be a mark for social or religious statut? Or perhaps a folklor distinction for a heroe or else?
I remember that statue or painting about gods, heroes and other folkloric characters get this kind of armor in Vietnam.
it could be used by generals to distinguish them from other soldiers. Recently, a Japanese mountain scale armor of Edo Period was auctioned.
tieba.baidu.com/photo/p?kw=%E7%9B%94%E7%94%B2&flux=1&tid=6192550575&pic_id=253d08087bf40ad10149890a592c11dfa8ecce74&pn=1&fp=2&see_lz=1&red_tag=k2648924821
This mountain pattern armour looks nice, if it was practical, well that's other thing. But exthetically it's nice.
Very cool.
Looks pretty protective to me
I think some people wrote it was ceremonial because of your rant video about it must have been ceremonial. Not because they actually think it really was ceremonial...
Purely from looking at your cardboard reconstruction, it seems like that mesh would be difficult to thrust a sword or dagger through but I'm not sure about heavier thrusts (namely spears and arrows), it's relying purely on the resistance to bending of one of those arms. Furthermore, even if this isn't an issue, it seems like it would catch any point in one of those corners and channel the full force through into the wearer - it looks like it has no deflective capability at all.
I'm not trying to say it's non-functional or ceremonial but (surprise, surprise) it probably was less effective than the more common types of armour.
It is better actually.
The multiple different meshes serve to dissipate blunt impact blows better than plate and stop glancing blows from lances.
As for arrows, this armour is normally padded with cotton (or mail or additional lamellar judging from the statues) and/or worn with a silk jacket underneath.
@@possumsam2189 I'm not sure about maces but surely lances/spears would get caught in those junctions, just like arrows? Either way, I'll stand by my point that if it wasn't common it probably wasn't as good as the armours that were (namely lamellar and brigandine).
@@Robert399 It was pretty common for Officers or Elite troops from the Tang Dynasty all the way to the Ming (When it was replaced by Brigandine due to the prevalence of guns during that time).
The Mountain patterned (or Star-studded) armour reached its peak during the Song Dynasty during the Heavily-armoured clashes between the Jin elite 'Iron Pagoda' (Which numbered in the thousands) and Song Heavy infantry/cavalry.
@@Robert399 The material behind the mountain pattern will catch the spear.
Three Kingdom vs Sengokü Jidai
3:07 How is this less labor intensive than mail? This is individual plate needed to cut? cast? forge? into this unconventional shape.
Mail is just metal wire that get linked together, no?
Depends on the kind of mail. Are the rings ends butted against each other? Are they riveted? Are they twisted? etc. What pattern are they linked in? What metal are they made out of? etc. For the most part, mail tends to require finer smithing skills than lamellar plates and offers inferior protection to lamellar or plate that’s made of the same material. The main advantages over lamellar and plate is that it’s lighter, more flexible and has a lower material cost.
@@genghiskhan6809 I think most of it is time, how long would it take to fore the iron into something small enough to be drawn out into wire, let alone the time to draw out the wire? Mail is just time consuming and time is money after all
China historically since the Han dynasty has the most advanced forge technologies and it's very possible that they can mass produce these and other weapons in some ancient assembly line of forges.
@@Jake-dh9qk I've seen the device they used to make wires. It is a very simple device but was not used in China. I guess nobody really thought of using wires to make an armor prior to that, and it has to do with armor making tradition as well. I've seen people claiming lamellar was used because it was cheap to produce and mass fit the soldiers so anything related to China was labeled "cheap". This argument has two problems. First, even nobles and generals wore lamellar or scale armors. Second, to produce lamellar was actually not that cheap: Song dynasty records indicated a piece of lamellar armor was equivalent to a standard soldier's 8 years salary and could buy a large tract of farmland able to make several families live comfortably.
You should adjust the focus manually, otherwise it’s a great video.