Editor's note: Armor is one of the necessary pieces of equipment for soldiers. Affected by the TV series, many people feel that the role of armor is not big, whether you wear armor or not, it is a knife to hack to death, but in the actual battlefield, there is no armor, then the difference is big. To put it simply, those who can't live without armor, those who have armor can live, those who are seriously injured without armor, those who have armor are slightly injured, those who have no armor are slightly injured, there is no armor and no injury, in short, wearing armor and not wearing armor, that is the difference between heaven and earth. The armor of the Western Zhou Dynasty has been unearthed in China, so you can refer to these existing equipment to imagine the armament of the Chinese army in the ancient era.
First of all, there are two kinds of helmets unearthed in the Western Zhou Dynasty, one is a composite gizzard made of skin and copper, the shape system is similar to the Shang Dynasty animal face gizzard, this kind of gizzard has been excavated in Shandong Qianzhao Dacun, and some parts of this gizzard have been unearthed in other parts of the country; the other is the copper cast plain face gizzard, which existed in the Shang Dynasty, but at that time it belonged to the steppe people's utensils, and in the Western Zhou Period, with the exchange of culture, some of the Zhou people living in the north also began to use this gizzard, such as the Beijing Changping Baifuyan National Cemetery was unearthed this gizzard.
▲ Changping Baifu Western Zhou At present, the Western Zhou helmets unearthed in China so far are also like this, it is more regrettable that the former palm of the village is located in Shandong, and the white float is located in Beijing, which in the Western Zhou Period, it does not belong to the core territory of Zhou Tianzi, so what helmets are worn by the Western Zhou army of the Eight Classics of Zheng'er, that is really only God knows. But there is no physical object, you can not make up, these two helmets are currently existing Western Zhou helmet physical objects, so you want to restore, you can only refer to these two styles, make up. After talking about helmets, and then talking about armor, what are the armors of the Western Zhou Dynasty? To say this, first from the Shang Dynasty, Anyang Yin Ruins unearthed a piece of leather armor remains, according to modern speculation, this armor should be a leather breastplate, that Shang Dynasty has, the Western Zhou has? This is not easy to say, if you boldly speculate, it may be there, but it should be noted that there are things in the former dynasty, and the later dynasties may not necessarily have them, such examples are not many in history, but if you want to say that at the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, there are 80% of them, after all, after the Wu King cut down the silk, the captured equipment can not be thrown away, right.
▲The former palm of the Early Western Zhou Dynasty of Omura
In addition to speculation, we have to look at the evidence. Some armor from the Western Zhou Dynasty has been unearthed in China. One of the more complete pieces was excavated in Pudu Village, Chang'an, Shaanxi. This excavation site is amazing, just now we said helmets, the city where the Western Zhou helmets were unearthed in China, most of them are not the core ruling areas of the Western Zhou, so the reference significance of the existing helmets is actually relatively limited, and Chang'an belongs to the core ruling area of the Western Zhou, to say what the armor of the Western Zhou Central Army looks like, it is more appropriate to refer to the armor unearthed in Chang'an.
▲ Modern people restore the Western Zhou warriors, the breastplate is pudu village breastplate Pudu village armor has been scattered when unearthed, a total of 42 pieces of armor, the armor piece is rectangular, are cast in bronze, each of the four corners has a hole. This kind of nail made of nail pieces is generally called za jia, and the production methods of za jia are also diverse, you can directly embellish the nail pieces together, you can also embellish the nail pieces on leather or fabric. In the later generations of the armor, the nail pieces were stacked on top of each other, so the nail pieces were surrounded by double rows of holes, and these nail pieces in Pudu Village only had a hole in each of the four corners, which could not be assembled according to the assembly method of the later generations. At the same time, when excavated, some of the nail pieces left leather marks on one side, so according to the experts' research, Pudu village armor should have an inner lining, and the bronze nail pieces are embellished on the inner lining, and they are not stacked on each other.
▲ Modern people restore the Western Zhou chariot experts for the final restoration of the Pudu Village armor is a rectangular breastplate, the breastplate can cover the front of the chest and abdomen, compared with the armor of later generations, this is undoubtedly a relatively backward armor. Because the first is that its protective area is small, and the second is that it is more likely to be pierced because the armor is not superimposed, for example, the enemy stabs the spear directly through the gap. The Pudu Village Armor is the only complete Piece of Western Zhou armor unearthed in China. In addition to the Purdue village armor, some other broken armor or armor parts have been unearthed in China. There are also people in China who have restored some results according to these parts, but there are more conjecture components, after all, in the field of archaeology, the physical object is the most important.
▲Modern people's painting "Inuyasha Killing Ghost"
Then if you look at it before and after, everyone is likely to come to a conclusion, that is, the Western Zhou army is actually not well equipped, the armor is a breastplate, and the helmet may still be leather. Then this kind of thinking is very wrong, discussing problems, can not be separated from reality, you look at a thing, you have to put it in the course of history to see. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the level of productivity was extremely low, according to modern research, at that time, bone weapons and stone weapons were still equipped with a certain amount. Relatively speaking, people who can wear bronze armor and wear leather helmets or bronze helmets are actually properly rich and handsome!
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