Archaeologists Find 2,700-Year-Old Assyrian-Style Leather Armor in China

The nearly complete leather scale armor was found in 2013 in the tomb of a 30-year-old male at Yanghai near the modern-day city of Turfan in Northwest China. “The Yanghai armor is an apron-shaped waistcoat covering front, groin, sides and lower back,” said Dr. Patrick Wertmann from the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich an his colleagues.

“It can be put on quickly and without the help of another person by wrapping the left part around the back, tying it at the right hip and fastening the shoulder flaps, with thongs crosswise over the back to laces at the opposite hip parts.”
“Fitting different statures, it is a light and most economic one-size-fits-all, highly professional defensive garment.”
“The cheek pieces of a horse harness, which also were found in the tomb, indicate that the owner was a horseman.”

“The Yanghai armor was professionally produced in large numbers,” Dr. Wertmann said. “With the increasing use of chariots in Middle Eastern warfare, a special armor for horsemen was developed in the 9th century BCE.”
“These armors later became part of the standardized equipment of military forces of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which extended from parts of present-day Iraq to Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt.”

“Whether the wearer of the Yanghai armor himself was one of the foreign soldiers in Assyrian service who was outfitted with Assyrian equipment and brought it home, or he captured the armor from someone else who was there, is a matter of speculation,” they said. “What it does establish, however, is that the Yanghai armor is one of the rare actual proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the early first millennium BCE when social and economic transformation accelerated.”

http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/assyrian-style-leather-armor-10352.html

The Yanghai leather scale armor, main fragments outside, view of scales: (1) front cover with remains of attached side panels; (2) end of proper left side panel; (3 and 4) shoulder flaps.
Image credit: D.L. Xu / P. Wertmann / M. Yibulayinmu.