QuoteReplyTopic: Ancient Greek military science. WMD? Posted: 21-Oct-2005 at 18:46
My personal favourite was a tale of a medieval Vietnamese battle. The general tied oil-soaked bundles of hay to the tails of thousands of oxen. Assembled before the enemy, his soldiers then lit the hay bundles, send the blindly infuriated beasts smashing into the enemy formation. The disorganised enemy troops were then easy pickings and faced utter defeat. I must say this one in particular is one of my favourite battle-field tricks.
The Romans(and possibly others as well) used to throw bee hives to
other ships during naval warfare so yeah thats considered biological
warfare. Even the braves warrior can't take on a swarm of bees stinging
all over
The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief - Le Bon
Destroy first and construction will look after itself - Mao
I forget the time and place, but Genghis Khan once took a city by setting fire to thousands of cats and birds and letting them loose inside the city, turning it into an inferno. Ok, so he didn't so much 'take' the city as he did 'destroy' it, but you understand how clever this was.
The Mongols transmitted the Black Death to Europe by hurling infected
corpses from their army into the besieged city of Kaffa with catapults.
It wouldn't surprise me if the ancients did the same.
Even though poisoned arrows have been around for ages, it's still amazing that mankind never lacks the ingenuity to come up with sophisticated killing devices.
Here's an article I have copied of the Discovery Channel
Biological Weapons Date To Classic Age
The
legendary Trojan War was won with the help of poisoned arrows, in one
of the first attempts of biological warfare, according to the first
historical study on the origins of bio-terrorism and chemical weapons.
"In this celebrated epic poem about noble heroes fighting honorable
battles, both sides actually used arrows dipped in snake venom," said
Adrienne Mayor, author of "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion
Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" (published
this month by Overlook Press).
Mayor, a classical folklorist in Princeton, N.J., gathered evidence
from various archaeological finds and more than fifty ancient Greek and
Latin authors, revealing that biological and chemical weapons —
horrible even by modern standards — did see action in antiquity.
Toxic honey, water poisoned with drugs, scorpion bombs, choking gases,
conflagrations and incendiary weapons similar to modern napalm were
widely used in historical battles. Among victims and perpetrators of
biochemical warfare were prominent figures such as Hannibal, Julius
Caesar and Alexander the Great.
"The first place we see the use of any kinds of poisons is in the story
of how Hercules, the super hero of Greek myth, slew the gigantic,
poisonous water-serpent Hydra. He dipped his arrows in the monster's
venom, creating the first biological weapon described in Western
literature," Mayor said.
The "Iliad" provides several clues to primitive biological warfare.
Written about 700 B.C., the poem centers on the war between the Greeks
(or Achaeans) and the Trojans, thought to have happened around 1250
B.C.
Through memorable episodes, the poem tells the legendary 10-year siege
of Troy by King Menelaus of Greece, who sought to rescue his wife Helen
from her abductor prince Paris.
"Several passages hint strongly that poisoned weapons were wielded by
warriors on the battlefield, although Homer never said so outright.
When Menelaus was wounded by a Trojan arrow, for example, the doctor
Machaon rushed to suck out the "black blood." This treatment was the
emergency remedy for snake bite and poisoned arrow wounds in real
life," Mayor wrote.
Indeed, snake venom does cause black, oozing wounds. The snake species
used in the Trojan War were vipers as their dried venom remains deadly
for a long time when smeared on an arrowhead.
"I think it is entirely possible that what we would now call biological
weapons were used by warriors in antiquity. My favorite example is
Odysseus, whose weapon of choice was arrows smeared with poison,"
Robert Fagles, chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at
Princeton University, and translator of the "Iliad," told Discovery
News.
Indeed, Odysseus, the archer renowned for crafty tricks, was the first
mythic character to poison arrows with plant toxins, Mayor said. Homer
recounts that he sailed to Ephyra, in western Greece, on a quest for a
lethal plant — probably aconite — to smear on his bronze arrowheads.
According to Mayor, the possibilities for creating arrow poisons from
natural toxins were myriad in the ancient world: "There were at least
two dozen poisonous plants that could be used to treat arrows. The most
commonly used toxins came from aconite (monkshood or wolfbane), black
hellebore (the Christmas rose of the buttercup family), henbane
(Hyoscamus niger), hemlock, yew berries and belladonna (deadly
nightshade)," she said.
Other toxic substances used for arrows and spears included venomous
jellyfish, poison frogs, dung mixed with putrified blood, the toxic
insides of insects, sea urchins and stingray spines. Odysseus himself
was killed by a spear tipped with a stingray spine, wielded by his
estranged son by the witch Circe.
"This is an important contribution to the history of chemical and
biological weapons. Mayor makes a convincing case that these weapons
have roots deep in human prehistory, and that they were actually used,"
biochemical warfare expert Mark Wheelis of University of California,
Davis, told Discovery News.
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
To the gods we mortals are all ignorant.Those old traditions from our ancestors, the ones we've had as long as time itself, no argument will ever overthrow, in spite of subtleties sharp minds invent.
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
There's an international conference happening as we speak, in Athens, on the above mentioned topic.
So far they conclude that the ways the ancients had in their disposal while conducting war are more than we imagine today.
They have identified biological & chemical weapons, used to poison, burn or contaminate enemies. Small mammals, snakes & germs such as plague were used for this purpose. Toxic substances were used, such as Mandragoras, a mineral called kinnavarites, incendiary substances were hurled by catapults, such as naphtha, asphalt or ceramic incendiary grenades equipped with fuses (similar to Molotov cocktails).
Greek fire, was supposivelly made of naphtha and tar, in order for it to attach to the enemy target without dispersing, similar to napalm.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find more info on the matter or reports from ancient sources. Can you?
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