Mysterious Chinese 2,600-year-old paper armor, blocking both swords, pistols or names

At first heard the name, few could imagine the formidable power of paper armor in ancient times, even blocking swords and pistols when fighting.

Few people know that ancient craftsmen in China invented paper armor, an invention that has never been used in the West. This type of armor was used around 600 BC.

Inventing 2,600-year-old paper armor

Despite the "fragile" appearance, paper armor shows great ability to fight. In order to create this strange armor, it is missing without mentioning the ancient paper invention in China.

Paper armor was used in China around 600 BC.(Photo: Discovery)

Specifically, while the Greek-Roman civilization is thriving in the West, ancient Chinese people developed paper, weapons, astronomy, mathematics, and metallurgy themselves. complexity at a level equal to or sometimes even better than the Mediterranean.

As we know, China is the place to invent paper. Legend has it that in about 105 years, a eunuch named Thai Luan was said to be the first to create paper from mulberry fiber.

Pieces of paper made from hemp in Han Dynasty.

Recently, however, researchers have also found evidence that hemp paper may have been invented earlier, around 100 BC. Then, with outstanding advantages such as low cost and low cost, writing paper gradually replaced materials for storing texts such as bamboo cards, turtle shells and silk.

According to Greg Martin, an expert on ancient armor, sharing in the MythBuster program, the ancient Chinese used armor made from paper very early, around 600 BC.

In particular, these paper armor is impregnated with pine resin or some other resin. Mr. Martin said, paper armor is said to be superior to metal armor at the time.

Interestingly, the paper armor even appeared before the writing was born. They really became a site of ancient soldiers when they went to the battlefield.

Made of 10-15 layers of paper made from mulberry bark, paper armor is even thought to be able to block the shot.

To test the potential of paper armor, Discovery's Mythbusters conducted a test to test durability, comparing the strength and versatility of this type of armor to that of armor. Steel was used in the same time in Chinese history.

Test the power of paper armor: The results are unexpected!

To test the strength, the team that made Mythbusters created both paper armor, in which one was impregnated with pine resin, and the other did not. Paper is used to make armor about 13mm thick.

Later, experts tried to use a variety of weapons to attack paper armor, including swords, 18th-century pistols and 0.45 revolvers used in the 19th century.

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Surprisingly, in most tests, even a non-impregnated paper armor also had the same protection as steel armor and sometimes even surpassed.

However, paper armor also has certain limitations in combating bombardment attacks and is "weaker" than the impact of the 19th-century revolver.

However, in general, armor made of paper also proved that its ability was no less than that of steel armor. Therefore, scientists have made a statement about the ancient Chinese who used paper armor to fight is completely feasible.

There is great power, but the paper shirt has a "deadly" disadvantage that is easy to disintegrate when wet.

This shows that, besides metal and leather, ancient workers knew how to use many other materials to invent body armor.

However, a "deadly" disadvantage of paper armor is that they can quickly disintegrate when wet or suffer from multiple attacks.

This is a constraint attached to the light weight advantage of paper armor.

However, the creation of armor uses the available materials, with the ability to even surpass metal armor, to really make our posterity admire.