The Bronze Age saw the creation of complex societies and complex warfare, and served as the setting of some of the world’s most famous myths. In fact, the Aegean Bronze Age was the time of Achilles and Odysseus — of the legendary Trojan Horse and Trojan War — memorialized in the works of Homer.
Not so mythical were the cultures that arose around the Aegean throughout the Greek Bronze Age, between 3000 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E., including the Minoan civilization on Crete and the Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece. It was these cultures that developed the Aegean’s first systems of writing, as well as some of its most innovative technologies.
Not the least of these developments was the titular metal of the age, which started to appear in Bronze Age Greece around five millennia ago, made by smelting copper and mixing it with other metals like tin. In time, bronze was made into jewelry, weapons, and in some cases, armor.
But how widespread was this early armor, and how effective? Not all cultures seemed to have employed it in military campaigns, and there is still some dispute about how intensely people like the Minoans and Mycenaeans used it.
Part of this debate is due to the relative rarity of surviving armor in the archaeological record. But recent research, involving carefully crafted replicas and modern marines, reveals that some ancient armor could’ve certainly given warriors a leg up.
