Origin of the lorica squamata

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Alan,

Indeed this is OT from the origins of the spatha, and interesting enough for a new topic:

As an aside, slightly off topic, but I can easily disagree with Dan Howard on the origin of scale armor. The oldest form of scale armor came from horse-hoves; it was cavalry armor. The cavalry, the chariot, and horse warfare comes from the steppes, not from the "Near East." It predates the Persians, the Greeks, and whomever else used it as protection. The use of full armor, scale or otherwise, can be traced back to the Massagetae (pre-Alans)and then back to the Altai kurgans (pre-Saka), all of it worn before the Greeks were stuffing linen into padded armor.

Although I am not convinced that chariot warfare is the same as 'cavalry warfare', I am in some doubt as to the origins of the scale armour. The first that I know of it is from ancient Egypt. I greatly doubt that the Egyptians received it from the steppes! In my mind, it's the development of metallurgy that's at the base of this armour, not the domestication of the horse. Likewise, chariot warfare hardly evolved on the steppes, right? It originated in the Near East, among the city states of Mesopotamia.