Too good to miss
#6
Hi,

The Greeks did use iron weapons and bronze armor at the same time.

Yes. It is good for armor to give a little so that some of the energy of the blow goes into cutting and deforming the armor. As long as it doesn't cut all the way through. That is basically how Kevlar works.

They probably also used bronze weapons concurrently with iron weapons for a least a time.

Maybe for a very short time. Would work OK for arrow heads and spear points, both of which mostly stayed flint well into the bronze age. Would not work too well with swords, since a bronze sword meeting an iron sword edge on becomes a very short bronze dagger very fast. However, since bronze (much less copper) was a poor material for swords, that probably wasn't much of an issue.

As an aside, the Iliad and Odyssey are full of references to spears and have few references to swords. The Trojan wars mostly took place in the bronze age, and various types of spears (light throwing spears, long "footman" spears and short stabbing spears -- each of which has it's own name in both Greek and Latin, but I can't remember any of them except "pilum" :) ) were the weapons of choice. Until the strength to weight ratio went way up with improved iron (and the random batch of steel) swords weren't really practical.

--Pete

How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?

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Messages In This Thread
Too good to miss - by --Pete - 06-17-2004, 01:53 AM
Too good to miss - by MongoJerry - 06-17-2004, 02:23 AM
Too good to miss - by TheDragoon - 06-17-2004, 01:55 PM
Too good to miss - by Saxywoo - 06-18-2004, 10:57 AM
Too good to miss - by Guest - 06-18-2004, 02:40 PM
Too good to miss - by --Pete - 06-18-2004, 05:09 PM
Too good to miss - by Guest - 06-18-2004, 05:56 PM
Too good to miss - by dkass - 06-19-2004, 12:05 AM
Too good to miss - by --Pete - 06-19-2004, 12:34 AM
Too good to miss - by TheDragoon - 06-19-2004, 12:42 AM
Too good to miss - by --Pete - 06-19-2004, 01:07 AM
Too good to miss - by dkass - 06-19-2004, 01:22 AM
Too good to miss - by --Pete - 06-19-2004, 03:06 AM

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