In 1960, an ancient suit of armor was discovered in the Greek village of Dendra. It has been dated to around 1,500 BC, making it a part of the Mycenaean civilization, which ruled Greece at the time. The armor is made of plates of copper alloy, held together by leather strips, and would cover a soldier from face to knees, supplemented with arm and leg pieces and a helmet decorated with pieces of boar tusks. The Dendra specimen was in strangely good shape, and might never have been used in battle. That brought up a question- was this armor designed to be used during warfare, or was it ceremonial? It seemed to be too hot and heavy to be worn by actual warriors.
To see if this armor could be used in battle, 13 exact replicas were made of the armor, and actual Greek soldiers from the 32nd Marines Brigade of the Hellenic Army were recruited to fight while wearing those replicas. To recreate battle conditions from 3,500 years ago, the soldiers ate a meal typical for the military of that time and were put in a temperature-controlled environment. Fight choreography was taken from Homer's Iliad. They fought for 11 hours with replicas of Mycenaean weaponry. You can see a video from the experiment here. Read about this re-enactment, er, experiment, and what we've learned about the Dendra armor at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Zde)
