Chain mail

Mail or maille (also chain mail(le) or chainmail(le)) is a type of armour consisting of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh. A coat of this armour is often referred to as a hauberk.

The earliest example of surviving mail was found in a chieftain's burial located in Ciumești, Romania. Its invention is commonly credited to the Celts, but there are examples of Etruscan pattern mail dating from at least the 4th century BC. Mail may have been inspired by the much earlier scale armour. Mail spread to North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Tibet, South East Asia, and Japan.

Herodotus wrote that the ancient Persians wore scale armor, but chain mail is also distinctly mentioned in the Avesta, the ancient holy scripture of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism that was founded by the prophet Zoroaster in the 5th century BCE.

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 defense against shark bites, and a number of other applications.

The origins of the word mail are not fully known. One theory is that it originally derives from the Latin word, macula, meaning spot or opacity (as in macula of retina). Another theory relates the word to the old French, maillier, meaning to hammer (related to the modern English word, malleable). In modern French, maille refers to a loop or stitch. The Arabic words "burnus", برنوس, a burnoose; a hooded cloak, also a chasuble (worn by Coptic priests) and "barnaza", برنز, to bronze, suggest an Arabic influence for the Carolingian armour known as "byrnie" (see below).

The first attestations of the word mail are in Old French and Anglo-Norman: maille, maile, or male or other variants, which became mailye, maille, maile, male, or meile in Middle English.

The modern usage of terms for mail armour is highly contested in popular and, to a lesser degree, academic culture. Medieval sources referred to armour of this type simply as mail, however chain-mail has become a commonly used, if incorrect, neologism first attested in Sir Walter Scott's 1822 novel The Fortunes of Nigel. Since then the word mail has been commonly, if incorrectly, applied to other types of armour, such as in plate-mail (first attested in 1835). The more correct term is plate armour.

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