It’s only the second known ancient armor of its kind.
According to a recent study, a man in northwest China was buried with armor comprised of more than 5,000 leather scales, a military outfit so precisely crafted that its pattern resembles the overlapping scales of a fish.
The Yanghai burial in northwest China, with the leather scale armor circled in red. (Image credit: Dongliang Xu/Turfan Museum)
The armor — which resembles an apron-like waistcoat — could be donned quickly without the help of another person. Patrick Wertmann, the study’s principal investigator and a researcher at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich, described the uniform as “It is a light, highly efficient one-size-fits-all defensive garment for soldiers of a mass army”.
The group referred to it as an early instance of bionics, or taking inspiration from nature for human technology. According to study co-researcher Mayke Wagner, the scientific director of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute and head of its Beijing office, the fish-like overlapping leather scales in this instance “strengthen the human skin for better defence against blow, stab and shot”.
The leather garment was discovered by researchers at Yanghai cemetery, an archaeological site close to Turfan, a city that is situated close to the Taklamakan Desert. Early in the 1970s, locals from the area found the ancient graveyard. There have been more than 500 burials unearthed by archaeologists since 2003, including the cemetery containing the leather armor. According to their research, the cemetery was continually occupied by ancient people from the second century A.D. to the 12th century B.C. for almost 1,400 years. Ancient Chinese historians referred to the Tarim Basin inhabitants as the Cheshi people and observed that they lived in tents, practiced agriculture, kept animals like cattle and sheep, were skilled horse riders, and were archers even though they did not leave written records, according to Wertmann.
The armor is a rare find. The only other piece of well-preserved ancient leather scale armor with a provenance dates to the 14th century B.C. and was found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb in ancient Egypt. Another piece of leather scale armor with excellent preservation can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is from the eighth to the third century B.C., but its original location is unclear.
Conservators examine the 2,500-year-old leather scale armor found in a man’s burial in northwestern China.(Image credit: Patrick Wertmann)
Finding the armor was a “huge surprise,” Wagner told Live Science in an email. The clothing was discovered by the researchers in the burial of a man who passed away at around the age of 30, along with other items like earthenware, two wooden and horn horse cheek pieces, and a sheep skull.
“At first glance, the dusty bundle of leather pieces [in the burial] … did not arouse much attention among the archaeologists,” Wagner said. “After all, the finds of ancient leather objects are quite common in the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin.”
Wagner said 5,444 small leather scales and 140 bigger scales, most likely made of cow rawhide, were “arranged in horizontal rows and connected by leather laces passing through the incisions,” according to a recreation of the body armor. According to Wagner, the different scaled rows overlap, a design that led the Greek historian Herodotus to compare similar-looking armor worn by Persian warriors in the fifth century B.C. to “the scales of a fish.”
The researchers discovered that a plant thorn embedded in the armor provided a radiocarbon date ranging from 786 B.C. to 543 B.C., proving that it predated the Persians’ fish-like armor. The team’s reconstruction determined that the armor could have weighed up to 11 pounds (5 kilograms).
Utterly unique
The discovery is one of a kind. “There is no other scale armour from this or an earlier period in China,” Wagner said. “In eastern China, armour fragments have been found, but of a different style.”
A deep dive into the history of scaled armor revealed that when chariotry entered the military around 1500 B.C., West Asian engineers created scale armor to defend the chariot drivers. After that, this kind of armour spread to the Persians and Scythians in the north and east, and eventually reached the Greeks. However, according to Wertmann of Live Science, “but for the Greeks it was always exotic; they preferred other types of armour”.
According to Wagner, it appears that the newly reported armor was not produced in China due to its regional peculiarity. According to The British Museum, it actually resembles Neo-Assyrian military gear from the seventh century B.C., which is seen in rock sculptures. According to Wertmann, “we suggest that this piece of leather scale armor was probably manufactured in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and possibly also the neighbouring regions”. According to the study’s authors, if this theory is true, “the Yanghai armor represents one of the rare real proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the first half of the first millennium B.C.E.
A photo (top) and illustration (bottom) of the Yanghai leather scale armor.
How was it worn?
The armor mainly protects the front torso, hips, left side and the lower back. “This design fits people of different statures, because width and height can be adjusted by the thongs,” Wertmann said. Its left-side protection meant the wearer could easily move their right arm.
“It seems the perfect outfit for both mounted fighters and foot soldiers, who have to move rapidly and rely on their own strength,” he added. “The horse cheek pieces which were found in the burial may indicate that the tomb owner was indeed a horseman.”
However, how the armor ended up in the man’s burial “remains a riddle,” Wertmann said. “Whether the wearer of the Yanghai armour himself was a foreign soldier (a man from Turfan) in Assyrian service who was outfitted with Assyrian equipment and brought it home, or he captured the armour from someone else who was there, or whether he himself was an Assyrian or North Caucasian who had somehow ended up in Turfan is a matter of speculation. Everything is possible.”