About a thousand years ago, people were so good at putting pointy pieces of metal on the end of sticks, they didn't think there was any room for improvement. But along came a clever (and kind of crazy) blacksmith who realized that linking a bunch of little metal loops together was a really great way to stop pointy pieces of metal from getting to the squishy parts of a person! Everybody who had a suit of this new kind of armor became very popular.