The Black Death helped make plate armour cheaper than chain mail
Full plate armour looks like the luxury option, yet by the 15th century it cost less than mail. Linking thousands of iron rings by hand took enormous labour, and after the Black Death workers had become far more expensive. Water-powered trip hammers, meanwhile, could beat out plates quickly, tipping the economics toward steel suits.
Protective gear appears at the dawn of written history. The Stele of Vultures from ancient Sumer, in what is now southern Iraq, holds the earliest known record of body armour, and scale armour shows up in New Kingdom Egypt, Zhou China and early India. Japan was making cuirasses and helmets by the 4th century, and lamellar armour of small plates laced together reached it via Korea around the 5th.
Mail, a mesh of interlocking iron rings, probably emerged sometime after 300 BC. The Celts are credited with inventing it, and the Romans likely borrowed their design. Over time armourers added small plates and discs to cover weak points, then coats of large plates sewn inside fabric or leather. Early plate was iron, sometimes surface-hardened into steel, while mail stayed in use at awkward joints such as armpits and elbows. A plate breastplate could also carry a lance rest.
Not everyone covered themselves head to toe. The Aztecs often wore only helmets and leg plates, relying on large shields for the rest. Chinese soldiers of the Tang, Song and early Ming periods protected key areas with plates but used cloth, leather or lamellar elsewhere, because too much metal hampered their martial arts. In pre-Qin times, Chinese leather armour sometimes came from exotic animals, including rhinoceros.
Armour's influence reached far beyond the battlefield. Its demands pushed forward mining, metal refining, wood lamination, leatherwork and decorative metalworking, fed into the Industrial Revolution and spurred the development of firearms. European heavy cavalry still wore breastplates and backplates into the first year of the First World War. The English word dates from 1297, from Old French armure and ultimately the Latin armatura.
Source: Armour
