Greek and Roman

The historical period considered here is mostly represented by the Classical era of the Greek civilization. An era of great influence on human history as it enriched every aspect of human culture. The classical period is commonly accepted to be the 200 year period between the 5^th and the 4^th centuries BC.

The Roman contribution is mainly represented by the 500 years-long period of the Roman Empire, historically placed between 27BC to 476 AD. During this period the Roman Legions tripled their territories going from 2.7 million km², to an outstanding 6.5million km².

This success can be tracked back to two main revolutionary concepts; The first being the military war tactics, in which discipline and obedience are key factors to maintain the front lines unbroken, and the second, and more relevant to us, the superiority of their war equipment.

As we can see from the pictures, the roman legionaries, greatly resembles the Greek hoplites. This can be explained by understanding that the Greek classical period had a tremendous influence over the roman empire. Influencing every aspect of their culture, from architecture to religion, from politics to war tactics.

The typical roman legionary can be considered to have some defensive and some offensive equipment. In the defensive we can include an extensive armor that effectively covered its vulnerable points. This armor consisted of a shield, a helmet and a body armor, all of which were thicker and covered more body parts than those of their enemies, which were mostly dressed with nothing other than clothing and defended with shields. The improved thickness of their armor was decisive in the prolonged engagement that battles often implied. The defensive equipment was usually made out of bronze, iron  and later steel. The use of each of these new materials were major leaps forward in the military superiority of the soldiers since stronger materials protected them better, lighter materials allowed them to be faster and more agile, cheap materials allowed the armies to grow bigger and so on. Usually, the lowest ranges didn't have the means or the privileges to wear a armor, instead they were protected by leather which acted as a thicker and more resistant skin (specially against the thrusting of swords), and wooden shields, perhaps reinforced with natural fibers (taking advantage of the anisotropicity of these materials) or even metallic parts.

On the offensive side, the legions had swords and spears mainly, they also were provided with chariots and some forms of cavalry. The swords themselves were generally made out of bronze or copper; Bronze is rarely encounter naturally and its very likely to have been produced by smelting of naturally occurring ores. Spears played an important role in battle, being for example a decisive war instrument in the Macedonian troops. The long spears, or Sarissa,  when used together with the phalanx formation proved to be the winning strategy responsible for the undefeated campaigns of Alexander the Great. Although the materials were common among trained enemy troops, the techniques used by the Romans resulted in higher lethality in combat. An example of this is the military training focused on thrusting of the sword rather than the slash which was only possible due to the use of materials that could stay sharpen for longer periods of time.

The differences between a roman legion and a well trained enemy troop didn't always lie on the materials they used, but rather on the ways they used these materials, or the processing the materials undergo. In the case of savages, this difference might have been decisive since savages probably didn't have access to the forging facilities and specialized blacksmiths the Roman Empire had, putting them from the beginning in the losing side. Another example might be the use of exotic alloys that offered dramatic mechanical improvements at the cost of being toxic to the soldiers, like for example the use of arsenical bronzes.

We can conclude that military superiority during the classical period can be tracked back to the discovery of superior materials, superior forging techniques, and use of these products accordingly to the military task expected.

Medieval

Early knights wore chainmail. It was a form of armor made of many small rings locked together. The rings were usually made of iron and was very heavy (around 23kg) . It easily rusted and was hard to clean. It protected the wearer from cuts but not much else.

Knights also whore metal helmets and shielding on their arms and legs.

Later on knights began wearing armor made up of solid metal plates that protected the wearer's body and bent at the joints. This armor weighed about the same as chain mail but was usually polished or painted in order to prevent the metal from rusting.

Even horse wear armor. It was called barding and covered the horse's head, neck, body and chest.

Ancient

 Weapons, as man-made things, with the purpose of killing or harming living things, were used in the war. Weapons are of great significance because mankind wanted to win the war unharmed, which means one side must kill the other quickly and deadly. As the only tool man could use, the level of weapons decides the live or death, mostly.

At ancient times, materials that human being could access to were far limited, which were only ones came directly from nature, like wood, stone, bones, etc. As a half man-made thing, weapons in that time was only used to hunt in order to survive. Wars were only between human being and nature. Weapons, as the major tools for human being to survive, were developed in order to get more efficiency.

With the development of productive forces, there were enough food for everyone to survive and even some left. As the left things got accumulated, selfish was firstly came up and this led to the fights between man and man, which was "true war" or the war we now defined.

In order to win the war, mankind were forced to invent more powerful weapons. But the renovation of weapons need great society source support, which means the richer a society was, the more advanced weapons they probably own. Of course there were exceptions. Like China in Qing dynastic.

So on this level, the relationship between weapons and the level of society was some how promote each other.

Description

Finally, we have narrow our search down;
We will be describing how the equipment of all the different types of soldiers has evolve as a consequence of the discovery of new materials, or the modification in the methods used to obtain them.

We have divided the progress in 8 different groups. These are:

-Ancient: Includes tribal warriors from ancient Mesopotamia, ancient china, and all the pre-colombian mayor cultures i.e. Inca, Maya and Aztec.

-Greek and Roman: Includes the warriors from ancient Greece and Rome. Probably the most representative warriors are the greek hoplites and the roman legionaries.

-Medieval: Includes the fully armored medieval knights. The horses, even though they represent an important part of the war machinery, have been left aside for simplicity.

 -Independance and Napoleonic: Includes the warriors that were involved in independance wars in the americas, as well as in the napoleonic wars in europe.

-WWI: Typical American and Birtish troops (leaving aside tanks, war vehicles, planes, ships, etc..) during the first world war.

-WWII: Typical German  troops during the second world war, leaving aside any other war machinery.

-Vietnam: American troops during the vietnam war.

-Irak and Afganistan: American troops today.