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Comment by lumb63 | Hacker News Reader

> It took over a decade of research, elaborate numerical models, and 13 Greek marines fighting in it from dawn till dusk to prove it was surprisingly good at its job

A decade of research and mathematical models to determine that an ancient civilization wasn’t just making useless armor for fun?

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> A decade of research and mathematical models to determine that an ancient civilization wasn’t just making useless armor for fun?

To be fair, making armor for fun is a decent industry/hobby in modern times, for stuff like LARPing, movie props, etc. Who's to say that the armor wasn't an example of something similar in ancient times? Taking the time to actually put it to the test, in its original context, is a good effort to prove or disprove that.

To also be fair: can't imagine these researchers weren't also just having a good time. Sounds a lot like they were just doing fancy LARPing themselves.

I'm sure they had fun, but that's no reason to downplay the role of that aspect of the research.

Ceremonial armors aren't made for fun. Should our descendents of the year 3000 look at the British bearskin (the tall furry hat of the Royal Guard) and think "of course, this was standard combat attire".

Presumably something like the mitznefet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitznefet_(Israeli_military)

https://www.twz.com/israeli-troops-chefs-hat-helmet-covers-e...

Exactly. Archeologist from the future working from fragmentary sources won't be easily able to determine if the mitznefet is battle gear or ceremonial parure. In fact, they could reach the wrong conclusion by noting the bearskin is more widespread than the mitznefet ("if it is efficient battle hat, why isn't it more widely in use?").

The article claims this is the sole armor we have ever found, and that there are also no depictions of armor, while there are numerous depictions of weapons, helmets, etc. So the thought wasn't "Mycaeneans smithed bronze armor for ceremonial purposes", it was "this one guy had a ceremonial suit of armor smithed for him". Turns out this is likely wrong as well, but it's not absurd on the face of it.

A suit of this armor would have been expensive as hell. Combined with the standard palace economy I would image it was rarely seen in combat even if it was used there.

But you might expect to see many depictions of it, since it would be high-prestige. The people painting vases weren't doing live battlefield reporting, there's no reason to expect their depictions to be accurate to real battles.

Those techniques almost certainly took considerably more than a decade to develop originally, and it's not like the battle-ready bronze armour business has been booming for the last couple of millennia, so there's been a bit of a brain drain in that sector.

That probably wasn't the only thing they were doing!

The idea that we and we alone discovered being smart, or maybe, at best, the people in the 19th and 20th centuries were on to something although they are still nowhere near as smart as us, and everyone else in history were nasty drooling superstitious cretins in every way is ingrained surprisingly deeply into our culture, in multiple places, for multiple distinct reasons.

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