Prehistory
- Key People:
- Chaim Herzog
- Robert Morris Page
The earliest military weapons
The earliest evidence for a specialized technology of war dates from the period before knowledge of metalworking had been acquired. The stone walls of Jericho, which date from about 8000 bce, represent the first technology that can be ascribed unequivocally to purely military purposes. These walls, at least 13 feet (4 metes) in height and backed by a watchtower or redoubt some 28 feet tall, were clearly intended to protect the settlement and its water supply from human intruders.
When the defenses of Jericho were built, humans already had been using the weapons of the hunt for millennia; the earliest stone tools are hundreds of thousands of years old, and the first arrowheads date to more than 60,000 years ago. Hunting tools—the spear-thrower (atlatl), the simple bow, the javelin, and the sling—had serious military potential, but the first known implements designed purposely as offensive weapons were maces dating from the Chalcolithic Period or early Bronze Age. The mace was a simple rock, shaped for the hand and intended to smash bone and flesh, to which a handle had been added to increase the velocity and force of the blow.
It is evident that the technical problems of hafting a stone onto a handle were not easily solved. Well-made maces were for a long time few in number and were, by and large, wielded only by champions and rulers. The earliest known inscription identifying a historical personage by name is on the palette of King Narmer, a small, low-relief slate sculpture dating from about 3100 bce. The palette depicts Menes, the first pharaoh of a unified Egypt, ritually smashing the forehead of an enemy with a mace.
The advent of the mace as a purposely designed offensive weapon opened the door to the conscious innovation of specialized military technology. By the middle of the 3rd millennium bce, mace heads were being cast of copper, first in Mesopotamia and then in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. The copper mace head, yielding higher density and greater crushing power, represents one of the earliest significant uses of metal for other than ornamental purposes.
From precious metals to base metals
The dividing line between the utilitarian and the symbolic in warfare has never been clear and unequivocal, and this line is particularly difficult to find in the design and construction of early weaponry. The engineering principles that dictated functional effectiveness were not understood in any systematic fashion, yet the psychological reality of victory or defeat was starkly evident. The result was an “unscientific” approach to warfare and technology, in which materials appear to have been applied to military purposes as much for their presumed mystical or magical properties as for their functional worth.
This overlapping of symbolism and usefulness is most evident in the smith’s choice of materials. Ornaments and ceremonial artifacts aside, metalworking was applied to the production of weaponry as early as, or earlier than, any other economically significant pursuit. Precious metals, with their low melting points and great malleability, were worked first; next came copper—at first pure, then alloyed with arsenic or tin to produce bronze—and then iron. A remarkable phenomenon was the persistence of weaponry made of the soft, rare metals, such as gold, silver, and electrum (a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver), long after mechanically superior materials had become available. Although they were functionally inferior to bronze or copper, precious metals were widely valued for their mystical or symbolic importance, and smiths continued to make weapons of them long after they had mastered the working of functionally superior base metals. Some of these weapons were plainly ceremonial, but in other cases they appear to have been functional. For example, helmets and body armour of electrum, which were probably intended for actual use, have been found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian burials dating from the 2nd and 3rd millennia bce.
Antiquity and the classical age, c. 1000 bce–400 ce
From the appearance of iron weaponry in quantity during late antiquity until the fall of Rome, the means with which war was waged and the manner in which it was conducted displayed many enduring characteristics that gave the period surprising unity. Prominent features of that unity were a continuity in the design of individual weaponry, a relative lack of change in transportation technology, and an enduring tactical dominance of heavy infantry.
Perhaps the strongest underlying technological feature of the period was the heavy reliance on human muscle, which retained a tactical primacy that contrasted starkly with medieval times, when the application of horse power became a prime ingredient of victory. (There were two major, if partial, exceptions to this prevailing feature: the success of horse archers in the great Eurasian Steppe during late classical times and the decisive use in the 4th century bce of shock cavalry by the armies of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. However, the defeat of Roman legions by Parthian horse archers at Carrhae in western Mesopotamia in 53 bce marked merely a shifting of boundaries between ecospheres on topographical grounds rather than any fundamental change within the core of the European ecosphere itself. Also, the shock cavalry of Philip and Alexander was an exception so rare as to prove the rule; moreover, their decisiveness was made possible by the power of the Macedonian infantry phalanx.) Heavy infantry remained the dominant European military institution until it was overthrown in the 4th century ce by a system of war in which shock cavalry played the central role.
Classical technologists never developed an efficient means of applying animal traction to haulage on land, no doubt because agricultural resources in even the most advanced areas were incapable of supporting meaningful numbers of horses powerful enough to make the effort worthwhile. Carts were heavy and easily broken, and the throat-and-girth harness for horses, mules, and donkeys put pressure on the animals’ windpipes and neck veins, severely restricting the amount they could pull. The yoke-and-pole harness for oxen was relatively efficient and oxen could pull heavy loads, but they were extremely slow. A human porter, on the other hand, was just as efficient as a pack horse in weight carried per unit of food consumed. The best recipe for mobility, therefore, was to restrict pack animals to the minimum needed for carrying bulky items such as essential rations, tents, and firewood, to use carts only for items such as siege engines that could be carried in no other way, and to require soldiers to carry all their personal equipment and some of their food.
On the other hand, mastery of wood and bronze for military purposes reached a level during this period that was seldom, if ever, attained afterward. Surviving patterns for the Roman military boot, the caliga, suggest equally high standards of craftsmanship in leatherworking, and the standards of carpentry displayed on classical ships were almost impossibly high when measured against those of later eras.
Defensive weaponry
The design and production of individual defensive equipment was restricted by the shape of the human form that it had to protect; at the same time, it placed heavy demands on the smith’s skills. The large areas to be protected, restrictions on the weight that a combatant could carry, the difficulty of forging metal into the complex contours required, and cost all conspired to force constant change.
The technology of defensive weapons was rarely static. Evidence exists of an ancient contest between offensive and defensive weaponry, with defensive weaponry at first leading the way. By 3000 bce Mesopotamian smiths had learned to craft helmets of copper-and-arsenic bronze, which, no doubt worn with a well-padded leather lining, largely neutralized the offensive advantages of the mace. By 2500 bce the Sumerians were making helmets of bronze, along with bronze spearheads and ax blades. The weapon smiths’ initial response to the helmet was to augment the crushing power of the mace by casting the head in an ellipsoidal form that concentrated more force at the point of impact. Then, as technical competence increased, the ellipsoidal head became a cutting edge, and by this process the mace evolved into the ax. The contest between mace and helmet initiated a contest between offensive and defensive technology that continued throughout history.
Helmets
The helmet, though arguably the earliest focus of the armourer’s craft, was one of the most demanding challenges. Forging an integral, one-piece dome of metal capable of covering the entire head was extremely difficult. The Corinthian Greek helmet, a deep bowl-shaped helmet of carefully graduated thickness forged from a single piece of bronze, probably represented the functional as well as aesthetic apex of the bronze worker’s art. Many classical Greek helmets of bronze were joined by a seam down the crown.
Iron helmets followed the evolution of iron mail, itself a sophisticated and relatively late development. The legionnaire of the early Roman Republic wore a helmet of bronze, while his successor in the Empire of the 1st century ce wore one of iron.
Shields
Shields were used for hunting long before they were used for warfare, partly for defense and partly for concealment in stalking game, and it is likely that the military shield evolved from that of the hunter and herdsman. The size and composition of shields varied greatly, depending on the tactical demands of the user. In general, the more effective the protection afforded by body armour, the smaller the shield; similarly, the longer the reach of the soldier’s weapon, the smaller his shield. The Greek hoplite, a heavy infantryman who fought in closely packed formation, acquired his name from the hoplon, a convex circular shield, approximately 3 feet (90 cm) in diameter, made of composite wood and bronze. It was carried on the left arm by means of a bronze strap that passed across the forearm and a rope looped around the inner rim with sufficient slack to be gripped in the fist. In the 4th century bce the soldier of the Roman Republic, who fought primarily with the spear, carried an oval shield, while the later imperial legionnaire, who closed in with a short sword, protected himself with the scutum, a large cylindrical shield of leather-clad wood that covered most of his body.
Body armour
Padded garments, and perhaps armour of hardened leather, preceded edged metal weapons. It was then a logical, if expensive, step to cast or forge small metal plates and sew them onto a protective garment. These provided real protection against arrow, spear, or mace, and the small scales, perforated for attachment, were a far less demanding technical challenge than even the simplest helmet. Armour of overlapping scales of bronze, laced together or sewn onto a backing of padded fabric, is well represented in pictorial evidence and burial items from Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt from about 1500 bce, though its use was probably restricted to a small elite.
Bronze
By classical times, breastplates of bronze, at first beaten and then cast to the warrior’s individual shape, had become commonplace among heavy infantry and elite cavalry. Greaves, defenses for the lower leg, closely followed the breastplate. At first these were forged of bronze plates; some classical Greek examples were cast to such fine tolerances that they sprang open and could be snapped onto the calf. Defenses for more remote portions of the body, such as vambraces for the forearm and defenses for the ankle resembling spats, were included in Greek temple dedications, but they were probably not common in field service.
Bronze was the most common metal for body defenses well into the Iron Age, a consequence of the fact that it could be worked in large pieces without extended hand forging and careful tempering, while iron had to be forged from relatively small billets.
The first practical body armour of iron was mail, which made its appearance in Hellenistic times but became common only during the Roman Imperial period. (Bronze mail was impractical because of the insufficient strength of the alloy.) Mail, or chain mail, was made of small rings of iron, typically of one-half-inch diameter or less, linked into a protective fabric. The rings were fastened together in patterns of varying complexity depending on the degree of protection desired; in general, smaller, lighter rings fastened in dense, overlapping patterns meant lighter, better protection. The fabrication of mail was extremely labour-intensive. The earliest mail was made of hand-forged links, each individual link riveted together. Later, armourers used punches of hardened iron to cut rings from sheets: this reduced the labour involved and, hence, the cost.
The earliest evidence of mail is depicted on Greek sculpture and friezes dating from the 3rd century bce, though this kind of protection might be considerably older (there is some evidence that it might be of Celtic origin). Little else is known about the use of mail by the Greeks, but the Roman legionnaire was equipped with a lorica hamata, a mail shirt, from a very early date. Mail was extremely flexible and provided good protection against cutting and piercing weapons. Its main disadvantage was its weight, which tended to hang from the shoulders and waist. In addition, strips of mail tended to curl at the edges; the Romans solved this problem by lacing mail shoulder defenses to leather plates. In the 1st century ce the legionnaire’s mail shirt gave way to a segmented iron torso defense, the lorica segmentata.
Plate-iron armour
While some early forged bronze armour was technically plate, the introduction of the lorica segmentata heralded the production of practical plate armour on a large scale. In general, the term plate would imply a uniform thickness of metal, and only iron could provide reasonably effective protection with uniform thickness without excessive weight.
While the Republican legionnaire’s lorica hamata hung to the midthigh, his imperial successor’s lorica segmentata covered only the shoulders and torso. On the whole, classical plate armour probably provided better protection against smashing and heavy piercing blows, while a shirt of well-made mail covered more of the body and, hence, afforded better protection against slashing blows and missiles.
Offensive weaponry
Development of the offensive technology of war was not as constrained by technological and economic limitations as was defensive weaponry. Every significant offensive weapon was widely available, while defensive equipment of high quality was almost always confined to the elite. Perhaps as a consequence, a wide variety of individual offensive weapons appeared in antiquity. One of the most striking facets of ancient military technology is the early date by which individual weapons attained their form and the longevity of early offensive weapons concepts. Some of the weapons of antiquity disappeared as practical military implements in classical and medieval times, and all underwent modification, but, with the exception of the halberd and crossbow, virtually every significant pre-gunpowder weapon was known in antiquity.
The ax
Limitations on the strength of bronze and difficulties in casting and hafting restricted the ax at first to a relatively broad blade mortised into a handle at three points and secured with bindings or rivets. The hafting problem became acute as improvements in armour dictated longer, narrower blades designed primarily for piercing rather than cutting. This led to the development of socketed axes, in which the handle passed through a tubular hole cast in the ax head; both hole and head were tapered from front to rear to prevent the head from flying off. This far stronger hafting technique must have been accompanied by a significant improvement in the quality of the metal itself. The pace and timing of these developments varied enormously from place to place, depending on the local level of technology. Sumerian smiths were casting socketed ax heads with narrow piercing blades by 2500 bce, while simple mortise-and-tenon hafting was still being used in Egypt 1,000 years later.
