3500-Year-Old Armor Is Changing Our Ideas Of Late Bronze Age Greece
The Greeks of the Iliad were a formidable military power long before the Athenians and Spartans
My first experience with a history class in high school centered on the ancient world. Logically, it is a good place to start. The course focused on Classical Greece, the rise and fall of Athens and Sparta, and their interactions with Persia.
To my young brain, the fifth to the fourth century BC seemed like the beginning of the world. But it’s not even ancient for Greece. A far older world existed long before Athens, hoplites, phalanxes, philosophers, and stone columns.
This era of Bronze Age Greece belonged to the Mycenaeans. They interacted with storied civilizations like the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians.
Mycenaeans likely went to battle in suits of hammered bronze armor and helmets made of boars’ tusks (we’ll get back to these interesting hats later). A recent instance of experimental archeology has given us a small peak into Mycenaean Greece. This test involved the Dendra armor. It’s one of the oldest full sets of bronze armor ever found, discovered in Southern Greece (near the village of Dendra in 1960) and once considered ceremonial.
