Another primary consideration in introduction & eventual disappearance of Segmentata?

[Dan Howard]

The vast majority of armies from the Bronze Age through to the end of the Middle Ages went unarmoured. During this time, armour of any kind was reserved for the elite. You usually only see the rank and file wearing body armour when there was a central authority with the economic and industrial infrastructure to mass produce armour. Examples include Assyria, Rome, and China. In Europe at the end of the Middle Ages you DO see segmented armour return in the form of coats of plates in the 13th-14th century, which became covered breastplates at the end of the 14th century, which became solid breastplates in the 15th century.

For the last time, time=money is a modern concept. In an age where people occupied themselves with many physical tasks, finding the labor to put together a coat of rings would not have been difficult nor costly.

So where do you think those rings are going to come from? You can't drive down to the hardware store and buy a spool of wire for a few dollars. You can't go online and order a bag of premade links from a supplier in India. You need an industry to make the iron and refine it enough to enable it to be drawn into wire. You need an industry to make those thousands of miles of wire. You need an industry to turn out all those millions of links and rivets. The cost of actually weaving the links into mail is a small part of the overall cost of mail armour.