History
The earliest finds of European pattern mail are from the 3rd century BCE from Horný Jatov, Slovakia, and a Celtic chieftain's burial located in Ciumeşti, Romania. Its invention is commonly credited to the Celts, but there are also examples of Etruscan pattern mail dating from at least the 4th century BCE. Mail may have been inspired by the much earlier scale armour. Mail spread to North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Tibet, Korea and Japan.
Mail continues to be used in the 21st century as a component of stab-resistant body armour, cut-resistant gloves for butchers and woodworkers, shark-resistant wetsuits for defence against shark bites, and a number of other applications.
Read more about this topic: Mail (armour)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)