by John O'Bryan
EASE OF USE: (Wheels can break; driving is rough. Roads not invented yet.)
DATE OF ORIGIN: 2500 BCE
BIRTHPLACE: Mesopotamia
OFTEN USED WITH: Wheel scythes, archers
PRECURSOR TO: Ford Pinto
HUMAN SACRIFICES
Somebody’s Got to Pay for This Shit
You can imagine the following speech coming from some village elder four thousand years ago: “Look, we’ve all got to die someday. At least this way you’ll die knowing you made the gods happy. Your death will bring us shitloads of rain for our crops. We’ll think of you every time we eat wheat!” It sounds insane to us in the modern world, but ancient man didn’t know anything. And since he didn’t understand things like weather, he assumed there was probably something pretty powerful living in the sky. And whatever it was must be pretty angry. And it must be a he. And he must want BLOOD. After all, people need blood, so a god must need even more of it. So in cultures around the world, high priests got out their sacrificing daggers and went to work. We’re not just talking Aztecs, either. Nearly every culture from Scandinavia to Egypt had some tradition of ritual murder. The Celts burned their sacrifices alive inside of a giant wicker effigy (the famous wicker man). The Mixtecs of Central America played a type of ball game against opposing cities. The rules were “loser gets sacrificed.” (That’s one way to make baseball interesting.) The Thuggee of India strangled unsuspecting travelers to appease Kali, the goddess of destruction. Even the biblical God Himself liked to trick the ancient Jews into sacrificing their young, only to stop them at the last minute and say, “Totally kidding! That was only a test.” Oh, that Jehovah. What a prankster.
THE FIRST BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS Remember when your parents would make you play with a kid who had chicken pox, just so you’d catch the disease and get it over with? You could say this is a mild example of a biological weapon. Historians tell us that the first bio-warfare was employed several thousand years ago by the Hittites, an ancient people who found themselves fighting to expand their empire, which stretched from Turkey to Syria. Turns out the Hittites would send diseased rams and donkeys to the cities they wished to conquer, where they spread their “Hittite plague.” The Hittites would then wait several years for their enemies to weaken, then invade and take everything. It was genius! Or it would’ve been, but the Hittites contracted the Hittite Plague, too. Other nasty forms of biological warfare would rear their ugly heads in the centuries ahead. Hannibal of Carthage launched pots full of venomous snakes onto the ships at Pergamon. The people of Hatra defended their fortress city against Roman invaders by hurling terra-cotta pots filled with scorpions. But perhaps the most revolting germ warfare occurred in 1346 with the Tartars’ siege on the city of Kaffa. After the Tartar army was decimated by bubonic plague, they launched the corpses over the walls into the city, thinking the stench would demoralize their enemies. It did a lot more than that: it spread the plague. Kaffans fled the city, taking the Black Death with them. Many historians believe this was precisely how the plague got to Europe before spreading like wildfire and wiping out a full third of its population. Good going, Tartars. Way to fuck up a continent.
EASE OF USE: (viruses and scorpions are not safe to handle)
INVENTED BY: The Hittites
MADE INFAMOUS BY: Tartars; Hittites; Hannibal of Carthage; your own mother, who knowingly gave you chicken pox
THE FIRST TRUE SWORDS When people talk about Bronze Age swords, they usually mean daggers. Most of the double-edged bladed weapons before 1500 BCE were too short to be considered longswords. That’s because the bronze at that time couldn’t hold its form when forged into anything longer than sixty centimeters. That all began to change when metallurgists discovered new methods of tempering bronze that allowed them to craft blades approaching three feet in length. (Now that’s a fucking sword.) Swordsmen realized they could penetrate armor more easily by thrusting with a sharp point rather than slashing with a blade. So swordsmiths forged more versatile blades with both slashing and thrusting capability. These swords became even more legit with the inclusion of a pommel on the hilt. Not only did this prevent the warrior’s hand from sliding off the grip, but now he could pistol-whip his enemy with the bottom of his sword if he didn’t feel like killing him just yet. Despite the improved length, these Bronze Age longswords were still a distant third choice of weapon in most cultures, behind spears and javelins. The exception to this rule was the Chinese sword, or jian. The jian was considered the gentleman’s weapon, as it required an educated swordsman to wield it. With two sharp edges and a thrusting point, it must have blown the thousands of ancient minds who struggled to master its potential. The Chinese would enroll in sword college just to unlock the infinite technique of the jian, and they would graduate with degrees in killing.
EASE OF USE: (much steeper learning curve than one-sided “backsword” weapons)
DATE OF ORIGIN: 2000 BCE (Western Europe); 700 BCE (China)
TYPE OF DAMAGE: Cutting and stabbing!
WHO WANTS A PIECE OF ASSYRIA?!
You know the little angry guy who’s always trying to pick fights with everyone in the bar? That’s ancient Assyria. This Mesopotamian country just happened to be smack-dab in the middle of a prime piece of real estate that everybody wanted. The Assyrians had previously been pushed around by the Hittites. Mighty Babylon was to the south. The Scythians lurked to the north. And Assyria lay right in the middle with no natural boundaries. Like the guy in the bar, Assyria was bullied a lot as a child, and it had no choice but to become a mean son of a bitch. With the slightest provocation, Assyria would stab these neighboring countries in the neck with a pen while screaming, “Am I here to amuse you?!” And that pen just happened to be made of a new metal that most of the ancient world hadn’t seen before . . . iron.
Assyria wasn’t the first to figure out how to smelt iron. That honor likely belongs to the Hittites. But eventually, the Assyrians . . . ahem . . . borrowed the iron smelting technique from the Hittites, and proceeded to unseat them as the dominant power in the Middle East. Iron weapons were something of a novelty at this point, typically made out of meteorite iron—a naturally occurring alloy that fell out of the fucking sky. The material was scarce, however, since meteors don’t land in your backyard every day. Assyria was the first to show up at a battle with an army that was completely strapped with iron, and the idea of an all-iron military had the entire ancient world shitting its tunics. They knew they had to get Assyria before Assyria got them.
With so many enemies, the Assyrians had to think outside the sarcophagus. They made damn sure their city walls were twice as fortified as everyone else’s. But more importantly, they developed a system of siege warfare that made everyone else’s walls look like they were made of straw.
SO YOU WANT TO SEIZE A FORTIFIED CITY
The easiest strategy when attempting to seize a city is the (1) passive siege. All you have to do is amass an army and have them camp outside the opposing city’s walls to show those fuckers you mean business. This will keep any food supplies from reaching the enemy. With a little luck, your enemies will be starving to death within a year, and they’ll wave the white flag.
Okay, so the passive siege takes a while. If you’re feeling impatient, you could try (2) mining. First, you’re going to have one of your men dig a trench, slightly closer to the city walls. When that’s done, have your army run to this trench and take cover. Then have your digger make another trench, a little closer to the wall. Repeat this until you’re close enough to dig underneath the city. But watch out—any adversary worth his salt is going to be listening for you, literally with his ear to the ground. He might try pumping noxious fumes into your mineshaft or filling the hole with water to drown your men.
If mining isn’t your thing, you could always try (3) going over the wall. You could do this by ladder, or by building an embankment—a large earthen ramp leading to the top of the wall. And the top of the wall, as a rule, is going to be much thinner and
weaker than the bottom. Walls of the Middle Eastern Bronze Age are almost guaranteed to be made of mud rather than rock, which can be hard to find in the middle of the desert. This means . . .
You can (4) sap (chip away) the wall pretty easily with a pick or crowbar. And once you’ve got a breach, it’s all over but the crying.
You can also (5) know a guy inside the city. Sometimes the invading army would bribe someone from the other side to betray his own city and open the gate for them. Since people are dicks, this happened a lot more than you’d think.
BATTERING RAM The easiest, most obvious way to breach a city’s walls is to penetrate its weakest point. This is almost always the gate. The principle of the battering ram is simple: have several of your biggest dudes heave a large log at the gate as hard as they can. If they can gather enough momentum, the gate should come down like a Christmas tree in January. The Assyrians took this simple battering ram principle a step further by putting metal wheels under it and turning it into a siege engine. Then they put wicker canopies on top to provide protection for their troops as well as their ram. They covered the tip of the ram in iron, and suspended it from a system of ropes that allowed it to swing for even greater momentum. At times, the Assyrians used a large spear for the ram head, enabling it to chisel rather than bash. They even built an archery tower to provide protection for the men powering the ram. Simply put, the Assyrians invented the Batmobile of ancient Mesopotamia. But despite all its weapons, the battering ram usually needed a little more protection to do its job. That’s where the siege tower came in.
EASE OF USE: (requires a ton of manpower)
USED WITH: Wicker or wooden canopy
PURPOSE: Knocking down walls and doors
PRECURSOR TO: Doorbell
SIEGE TOWER This might be the crown jewel of crazy Assyrian warfare. Its purpose was twofold: (1) To provide cover for the invading Assyrian infantry. Siege towers housed a number of archers and ranged weapons for this purpose. While these archers were keeping the defenders on the wall busy, the invading infantry would be able to approach the wall with ladders. In fact, the Assyrians were so badass they could climb these ladders while using both hands to fire arrows up the wall, meaning they were climbing the ladder with no hands! (2) The other function of a siege tower was to get close enough to the wall to support a bridge. When a siege tower had been wheeled close enough to the wall, the siegers could lower a gangplank, providing a walkway into the city. With the attacking archers covering them, the infantry would move across the gangplank and begin the melee fight atop the wall. All of this sounds easy, but there were obstacles. These towers were made of wood, and that meant the defending city would usually try to set them on fire. The Assyrians would have to be on constant guard for the fire attack, extinguishing these fires with ladles full of water. They also covered their siege engines in wet animal skins, making them less flammable, but probably more stinky. Imagine riding to war inside a giant wet dog.
DATE OF ORIGIN: 900 BCE
USED WITH: Battering ram; archers
USER REVIEWS: “Oh, shit! That house is attacking us!” — Town of Lachish, which the Assyrians seized in 701 BCE
SCALDING SUBSTANCES By now you’re probably thinking that seizing a fortress must be the easiest thing in the world. That’s not exactly true. The people inside the city generally wouldn’t just hand over their city. In fact, they would usually fight back pretty hard. They had one tactic at their disposal that was both simple and nasty: dumping scalding substances onto their invaders. Piping-hot cauldrons of liquid were poured onto invaders at the city walls, serving as one of the most effective deterrents to would-be castle stormers. Unless the invading army could tunnel in from a distance, they had no choice but to go near the walls. And that meant a pot of boiling-hot oil, water, resin, or even sand would always be waiting for them. Once dumped, these searing-hot substances could seep through any armor, including metal. Anyone who didn’t go into shock from sheer pain would have to continue the siege with his flesh melting right off his bones. And if the invaders still weren’t completely demoralized, quicklime was also poured into their faces, causing chemical burns and blindness. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in ancient Mesopotamia?
EASE OF USE:
USED WITH: Pots, cauldrons, and “murder holes” (holes built into castle walls specifically for scalding invaders)
PRECURSOR TO: Greek fire
MADE FAMOUS BY: That kid from Home Alone
Chapter 3.
ANCIENT CHINESE SECRETS
1000–300 BCE
WESTERNERS have always been fascinated by the East. The people of the Orient have exotic spices. They write up and down instead of left to right. They fight with their feet and eat with sticks. They’ve also been pretty creative in the art of war, and I’m not just talking about the dreaded Chinese finger-cuffs. Asian civilizations were some of the most advanced of the ancient world, and the weapons they used were like nothing the West had ever seen.
STAFF This simple wooden pole is one of the oldest weapons to come out of Asia. In fact, the Chinese call it the grandfather of all weapons, which explains why it eats dinner at four o’clock and always forgets your name. Like a lot of martial arts weapons, the staff started out as a farm tool. It was originally a tenbin, a pole used to carry buckets of water. But necessity is the mother of invention. You can imagine the scenario: Some farmhand was returning from the well with his newly fetched water, when he got jumped by highwaymen. He ditched the water buckets, spun his tenbin around and clocked his assailants. Or they murdered him, and took the tenbin idea for themselves. Either way, the gun (Chinese for “staff”) was born on that day. Since then, this simple weapon has been celebrated by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, old kung fu movies, and Napoleon Dynamite. (If you’re still having trouble picturing it, it’s that stick they twirl around real fast.) It can be used to club, trip, parry, sweep, slash, poke, or pole-vault, and its length makes it ideal for mid- to long-distance combat. It can even be used to keep multiple assailants away. Though it had been used since antiquity, the staff wouldn’t be recognized as a respectable weapon until the seventeenth century, with the development of the Japanese martial art bojutsu. The staff was no longer just a peasant weapon, and ancient Chinese hipsters would forever gripe about how they were into the staff before it was cool.
EVOLVED FROM: Tenbin (a tool for carrying water buckets)
PRECURSOR TO: Polearms
ALSO CALLED: Quarterstaff; bo (Japanese); “bo staff” (which redundantly translates to “staff staff”)
USED FOR: Mid- and long-range melee fighting; limbo contests
CROSSBOW Imagine that you’re a Chinese emperor and some neighboring tribe of nomads is plotting to pillage your kingdom and rape your women. You need archers fast. But it takes years of training to become skilled enough to use a traditional vertical bow. Not only that, you need the upper-body strength of a chimpanzee to wield it. What’s a Chinese emperor to do? Lucky for him, some ancient so-and-so invented the crossbow—a weapon that would revolutionize warfare in China (and later all of Europe). Sure, the crossbow is about as sleek and mobile as a hippopotamus. It also takes longer to load than a longbow. But you can load it anytime before the battle starts, saving you valuable seconds during combat. Furthermore, the crossbow’s projectiles fly much faster than those of a vertical bow. Even though its bolts possess less mass than arrows, they’re propelled by more draw weight (the force necessary to pull back the string). This means a faster and deadlier shot. But most importantly, it means the crossbow is easy to use. The string can be drawn with two arms, meaning that even the biggest weakling can load it. And it requires very little training, which ensures that this weapon can be used by the most lowly dirt-farming simpleton. The Chinese had lots of farmers, and they now had a weapon to arm them with. By the third century BCE, the Chinese were mass-producing these with bronze trigger mechanisms that made for a more reliable shot. The predominance of this weapon would ultimately allow the
Qin army to conquer all competing Chinese kingdoms, uniting China in the biggest empire the ancient world had ever seen.
EASE OF USE:
USED WITH: Bolts, pellets (ammunition)
FUN FACT: Modern-day prison inmates have been known to craft fully functioning crossbows from rolled-up newspaper
GE & JI Few things were more terrifying for a warrior than fighting on foot while his enemies were on horseback. In almost every instance, the mounted combatant would squash the infantryman like a frog under truck tires. Eventually, the ancient Chinese came up with a way to level the playing field: they began arming their infantry with polearms. One of the originals was the ge, or “dagger-axe.” As evident from its name, the ge was a dagger fixed to the end of a pole, and its primary purpose was to throw mounted enemies from their steeds and chariots. If it caught the neck, the dagger-axe could even rip clean through the throat and vertebrae to decapitate its victim. Over the years, Chinese engineers experimented with various angles of the blade. They discovered that if the angle was too great, the blade couldn’t hook its target. If the angle was too small, the blade couldn’t slash easily. They ultimately settled on a 100-degree angle—the perfect position for both hooking and slashing a horseman. (And you thought your protractor would never come in handy.) As if the ge wasn’t enough of a killer, the Chinese added a spear to the tip—and yet another perpendicular blade to the end—forming the ji, the Swiss Army knife of ancient polearms. The ji could skewer, it could chop, it could hook, and most importantly, it could do it all from a distance. The foot soldiers of ancient China felt their balls grow three sizes. The prospect of facing down charging war chariots suddenly seemed a little less pants-shittingly scary.
