Sanctuary OOC

20,000 BC

The earliest arrowheads date from this time, suggesting that bows and arrows were in use.

Some believe they were invented much earlier, pointing to a single 60,000-year-old stone that may or may not be an arrowhead.

A thorough analysis of projectile points from archaeological digs around the world suggests that projectile weapons were not in widespread use before 50,000 years ago (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2005.10.015).

5300 BC

Horses are first domesticated, on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

As well as revolutionising transport in general, horses are instrumental in the history of warfare. Only in the 20th century, with the appearance of rapid-fire weapons such as machine guns, do armies turn away from a reliance on horses.

5000 BC

The Bronze Age enables the development of the first metal daggers, and later swords.

By 1000 BC, swords are intertwined with Celtic mythology and ritual in Britain, reflecting their importance in society. Perhaps echoed by the Excalibur myth, swords are ceremonially placed in rivers, possibly as offerings to gods (see The swords that had to die).

500 BC

The traction trebuchet is thought to have been developed in China around this time. Powered by teams of about a dozen people, it could sling balls of rock as far as 125 metres. Around the same time, the ancient Greeks develop their own siege weapon, the ballista, a kind of scaled-up crossbow.

The traction trebuchet was long considered to be folklore, until a working model was built in 1991 and shown to be effective. It was eventually replaced by the counterweight trebuchet, which is driven by a falling weight rather than manpower, in the Middle Ages.

800 to 1300 AD

Gunpowder is invented in China. This leads rapidly to a primitive firearm, the "fire lance", the first rocket, known as the "fire arrow", and primitive bombs under the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279) – new technology partly driven by aggressive neighbours like the Jin Dynasty to the north.

China[edit source]

As early as 492, Chinese alchemists had noted that saltpeter burns with a purple flame, allowing for practical efforts at purifying the substance, one of the most important ingredients in gunpowder. The first reference to gunpowder in China occurs in a Daoist work from the mid-9th century, the Zhenyuan miaodao yaolüe. However, the earliest surviving chemical formulae date to 1044 in the Wujing Zongyao, a Chinese collection of military information. At this point the formulae contained too little saltpeter (about 50%) to be explosive, but the mixture was highly flammable. A silk banner slightly predating the Wujing Zongyao depicts a gunpowder-fueled flamethrower.[5]

Fireworks were invented in ancient China in the 10th century to scare away evil spirits.

In AD 1280, the bomb store of the large gunpowder arsenal at Weiyang accidentally caught fire, which produced such a massive explosion that a team of Chinese inspectors at the site a week later deduced that some 100 guards had been killed instantly, with wooden beams and pillars blown sky high and landing at a distance of over 10 li (~2 mi. or ~3.2 km) away from the explosion.[6]

By the time of Jiao Yu and his Huolongjing (a book written by Jiao Yu that describes military applications of gunpowder in great detail) in the mid 14th century, the explosive potential of gunpowder was perfected, as the level of nitrate in gunpowder formulas had risen to a range of 12% to 91%,[3] with at least 6 different formulas in use that are considered to have maximum explosive potential for gunpowder.[3] By that time, the Chinese had discovered how to create explosive round shot by packing their hollow shells with this nitrate-enhanced gunpowder.[7]

A medieval European work describing the powerful weapons that had been built by the Chinese,[8] had been suggested by historian Kenneth Warren Chase to be referring to the Chinese invention of Gunpowder.[9]

According to modern historians genuine firearms appeared to have been invented first in China in the 13th century.[10] The Chinese developed fire arrows in 989 tipped with explosives, along with flame throwers by 1000. Another weapon was called the huo-yao pien-chien, meaning "gunpowder-whip-arrow".[11]

A gunpowder weapon from China, the huo p'ao, was described in the Sung Shih. It was suggested that this huo p'ao was related to a weapon which appeared in 1232, the chen t'ien lei. Lou Ch'ien-hsia and his troops used it in 1277. The passage stated that "He lit it and a clap of thunder was heard, the walls crumbled, and smoke covered the sky. Many soldiers outside died of fright. When the fire went out, they went inside and failed to find even the ashes of the 250 defenders; they had disappeared without trace."[12][13][14][15]

The "t'u huo ch'iang" was a bamboo tube which shot out multiple pellets when fired.[16]

The Mongols used gunpowder during Ogdai Khan's invasion of Europe.[17] "Fire catapults", "p'ao", and "naphtha-shooters" were used.[18][19][20][21]

In China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279AD), weapons known as Zhen Tian Lei (震天雷, "Sky-shaking Thunder") were created when Chinese soldiers packed gunpowder into ceramic or metal containers. In 1044, a military book Wujing Zongyao ("Compilation of Military Classics") described various gunpowder recipes in which one can find, according to Joseph Needham, the prototype of the modern hand grenade.[10]