Best video about Arrow vs Armour?

[Vardano]

Hi,

I have just watched a very interesting video about arrow vs armour. Why I'm is posting this here is to ask you guys if any armour from antiquity could have been as good as this plate armour from medieval era. I think this even could be used as unique data to improve our beloved mods

[Vardano]

I forgot how to post correctly youtube links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE

[kpagcha]

This test Lindybeige posted is pretty interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg

[Cool_Ranch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzYFjQE2vD0

[Dago Red]

All of these are irrelevant to DeI though, they belong in Broken Crescent or some medieval mod's forum. No one had steel armor or anything close to it at this time. Steel wasn't even invented yet. Somewhere in China they were making a kind of early steel, adding carbon to iron but it was what we would call cast iron today... nothing resembling hardened steel plate armor of late medieval French knights.

[geala]

You will hardly find a test so well made like which you posted first. Most tests suck, mostly because of inaccurate armor and/or arrows. You should take into account that the armor plate used was top tier at the period. It is from c. 1390 AD where only very few plate was seemingly hardened steel. Hardened steel armor became more common in the second part of the 15th c. AD. Only few knights would have had such an armor in 1415 AD.

It's a pity that they did not try cheaper iron or mild steel armor, too. I would also like to see a test with sharp bladed arrowheads (similar to type 16 for example). Might be better against plate. And a test with 15th c. AD arquebuses would be nice, to battle the still often read nonsense that bows and crossbows actually were better than the early "firearm crap".

The results are not totally irrelevant to the ancient period, or other medieval periods. They show a common aspect, namely how difficult it is to penetrate plate armor. The ability to make steel from iron is commonly dated to have existed from the 10th c. BC; it is clearly there from the 4th c. BC. But steel or iron was seemingly seldomly used for armor in this period. Roman segmented armor, as far as we can guess, was made from iron or mild steel. Early plate armor was usually made of bronze. Bronze is heavier than iron and less sturdy but can be hardened and is also tough. It is quite expensive, too.

A test of ancient bows and arrows against ancient armor would be great. There are some tests made (for example against ancient Egyptian bronze scale armor which could not be penetrated from 7 m) but all suffer in one or more of the three components used.

[Dago Red]

The ability to make steel from iron is commonly dated to have existed from the 10th c. BC; it is clearly there from the 4th c. BC. But steel or iron was seemingly seldomly used for armor in this period.

10th c BC -- You're talking about rare one-off instances, and not in the west, that's in what we call China now. There was no steel in Europe or the Mediterranean unless it came from Chinese merchants and even then, it's not the high quality steel people think of -- it's not wootz, or Damascus, or Toledo, etc. We know one of Tutankhamun's prized possessions (1330 BC), was a relatively simple iron dagger placed directly on his chest in burial. Because even iron was so rare in the west (this one coming from the Gods - meteorites) that this was valued above all manner of more dazzling treasures.

4th C BC, you're right I had my dates turned around. But even then steel was rare and again mostly coming from one or two places (Spain or the trade routes).

Point is no one was making hardened steel cuirasses until the 1400s with any regularity, and even then, expensive and uncommon.

The test may still be a good illustration of what happened to common arrows against high quality iron/bronze cuirasses of the time, but each variable changes this equation. Bows were different, arrows were different. Cuirasses weren't aerodynamically shaped. We talking Aedui archers, or Parthian? Scythian horse archers riding in close, firing point blank, and retreating, or a contingent of Cretan archers showering from afar?

Last time I checked it was widely believed that overlapping scale armors -- whether metal or hardened leather -- were better overall protection against missiles than a single-piece cuirass.

[geala]

I took the 10th c. BC date for steel from "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" by A. Williams, he cites some articles about it as far as I remember. It seems to be a debated date, and I'm not interested in the period, so I did not care much. In the DeI period steel was more or less common, but not for armor, as you said. And also for weapons it was this or that, many Celtic swords were hardened steel partly, but not all by far, and there are also Imperial Roman swords more or less made of very mild steel.

For scale armor, a lot would depend on thickness, similar to plate. It's partly difficult to take clues of original thickness from findings because material could be lost. In the test I mentioned about Egyptian scale (I read it in "The Cutting Edge" by B. Molloy) they tested several arrow tips (bone, ivory, bronze) against bronze, bronze/rawhide mixed and pure rawhide scale corselets. While the bronze (impenetrable) and bronze/rawhide fared very well, the pure rawhide was relatively easily penetrated. The bow used was comparatively weak (45 lbs or so) but resembles the average drawing weight of Neolithic and Bronze Age bows, as far as can be judged by reconstructions.

[Chrissant]

I believe the finest steel available was the sort that the Parthian Nobles would purchase from craftsmen/merchants that had access to the indo-baktrian metal trade, like Marw. Plutarch makes reference to how fine the "Margianian" steel was from that area when recounting the battle at Carrhae. The techniques involved were of Indian origin. I believe, just as a hypothesis, these late republican interactions between Romans and Parthian cataphracts who had access to early versions of steel plates are what eventually inspired the design of the so called segmentata armor. Romans are best at adaptive mimicry; After all, their mail, scutum, pila, gladius, almost the entirety of their military arsenal were appropriated into their customs from periphery cultures.

As for whether it was any close to medieval hardened steel, I probably think not. Metatron discussed this in some of his videos, how the steel plates of antiquity whether it'd be Roman or otherwise would be at best case-hardened on the outside, which gives it an advantage skirmish fire more so than standard mail, but case-hardened steel was completely different than Medieval steel. More than 3 times stronger, I believe.