Posted on 01/30/2004 7:18:50 AM PST by vannrox
The following ARE exerpts... "...From Hercules' poisoned arrows to early germ warfare and attacks with scorpion bombs and red-hot sand, she contends, cultures around the world have grappled with the revulsion and justification of using these unconventional weapons ever since they began creating their own myths and recording their histories. Mayor has compiled a slew of examples in her new book, "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" (Overlook Press)..."
"...The early dilemmas posed in mythic form would be recorded eventually in the annals of historians as combatants put their growing knowledge to practical - if controversial - use. The first recorded instance of poisoning an enemy's water supply, for example, appeared in the sixth century BC in the Sacred War, when a number of city-states, Athens among them, attacked the Greek harbor town of Kirrha.
"They were besieging this town for having taken advantage of a sacred site, for not respecting the sacred site of Apollo," Mayor says. And since the aggressors called it a sacred war, she adds, the label lent a certain justification to the use of the unconventional warfare.
The attackers poured poison into the water supply, sickening its inhabitants and leaving them easy marks for the ensuing full-scale slaughter of defenders and civilians alike. But the victory was tainted by a fair amount of soul-searching throughout Greece..."
"...In mapping out the early instances of biochemical warfare, Mayor says she was amazed by the relative sophistication of its wielders.
"One thing that really surprised me was to find that the ancient Sumerians, around 1700 BC, had a sophisticated concept of the spread of contagion," she says. "There are some tablet inscriptions from the ancient Sumerians that warn people to stay away from someone who had fallen ill." The inscriptions also warned against touching the afflicted person's clothing, dishes and other personal possessions.
It's a short step between learning that knowledge and putting it to other uses, she says.
"You don't really need to have a scientific understanding of epidemiology, chemistry and toxicology. All you need to have is experience and observation."
Wheelis says he's less surprised by the early know-how. "The basic fact is that humans are very observant and we learned by necessity to recognize toxic and poisonous things long ago," he says. "We had to. Those who didn't, didn't survive."
"...The ancient Hittites apparently had guessed correctly by 1200 BC, when they drove victims of the plague into enemy territory in the hopes of infecting the enemy..."
"...Mayor says her research yielded another surprise in the "sheer variety of nefarious weapons. That was just staggering to me."
One of the more gruesome instances occurred in AD 198, when the Romans besieged Hatra, a fortified city between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.
The citizens of Hatra would not be overcome so easily.
"They prepared two forms of surprise weapons on the Roman besiegers," Mayor says. "The first was that they gathered petroleum from the oil fields around Hatra, a substance that would have been virtually unknown in Italy. They would pour burning petroleum down on the Romans, and these fires are unquenchable, there's no way to put them out." The petroleum burned the Romans' weaponry, melted their armor, and incinerated the attackers, forcing the emperor to withdraw his troops.
When the Romans returned, the people of Hatra already had gathered scorpions and other poisonous creatures such as assassin bugs from the desert. They filled terra cotta pots with their biological arsenal, in effect creating crude scorpion bombs.
"In a sense, it doesn't even matter how many times the scorpions stung the soldiers," Mayor says. "It's just the horror of having these pots break on your head and having the scorpions crawl on you."
Even crude weapons were transformed into effective psychological deterrents - might the defenders of Hatra have even more horrific weapons at their disposal? - and the biochemical "double whammy" defeated the much-feared Roman siege, Mayor says.
A classic case occurred in 322 BC when Alexander the Great's Macedonian army laid siege to the Phoenician island city of Tyre.
"The historians tell us that the Phoenicians realized that the Macedonian soldiers were braver, more courageous than they were," Mayor says. "And so they devised a diabolical weapon."
The weapon of choice for the Phoenician defenders was sand scooped into shields, where it was heated until red-hot and then catapulted onto the Macedonians.
The effect was devastating. Even the Macedonian shields became red-hot, forcing the soldiers to drop their only protection. "So this was like a rain of burning sand, and it got under their armor, and each grain of sand would imbed itself while burning," Mayor says. She calls it the first recorded evidence of incendiary shrapnel, producing much the same effect as modern metal-based incendiaries that contain thermite and magnesium and are designed to splatter molten metal on the victim.
Even then, however, observers condemned the attack.
"There, the historians accuse the Phoenicians of devising this diabolical weapon because they were cowardly," she says. Roman historians responded similarly to other "unfair" battles, writing that dipping arrows or spears in poison disgraced the very iron used to forge them.
"So there were some outspoken critics of this type of war, but on the other side, tacticians would write manuals listing literally hundreds of ways to use these types of weapons," she says..."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Cyclops Myth Spurred by One-Eyed Fossils?
National Geographic NEWS ^ | 02/05/03 | Hillary Mayell
Posted on 02/08/2003 8:01:23 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/839013/posts
Bees, snakes, germs - any weapon in a pinch
The Vancouver Sun | 11/29/2003 | Jay Currie
Posted on 11/30/2003 7:12:18 AM PST by TrebleRebel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1031027/posts
American troops launch 'Exorcist' tour at ancient temple
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 01/04/04 | Colin Freeman
Posted on 01/03/2004 3:12:38 PM PST by Pokey78
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1051064/posts
...Hatra's defensive record against invading superpowers, which involved using early forms of chemical and biological weapons. Naptha bombs and jars of desert scorpions were poured over the outer wall to successfully repel Roman invaders , according to the classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor... The city was left in ruins after it was sacked and burnt by Sapor, the Sassanian Persian king, in AD 241. The impressive temple complex dedicated to several Hatrene gods, the chief of which was the sun god Shamash, lies in the very centre of its limestone and gypsum walls.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Chinese launched human waste into enemy fortress via their cannons, to do the same.
Apparently the use of fire by the Israeli army is okay, but the use of bio and poison is not. Self-imposed, based on their own idea of ethics in war.
The density of Quartz (primary constituent of most beach sand) is about 2.63 (grams/cubic centimeter). That means it's 2.63 times as dense as water. Think how well water holds heat, and then consider a much denser material. That stuff, heated to, say, about 800 degrees (which is about all that's practical using the method described) would cause horrible burns. Ouch.
So with all this evidence of the tactics of the ancient Iraqis, where were the nukes?
And both the British and Germans accused each other of pouring motor oil down the water wells they dug in Libya each time Libya changed hands throughout the war. Neither realized that the oil in the wells was due to natural seeps in the area. The huge oil fields under Libya weren't discovered until after the war. It's interesting to speculate how the course of the war would have changed if the Germans had realized before the war that there were these huge oil fields in Libya.
I seem to remember someone during the early outbreak of the black death was besieging a city, and one of the things they did was lob heads of those who had died from the plague...I think this was in Eastern Europe somewhere...or where Europe and Asia meet...Was one of those things, the implications were, that helped spread the plague westward.
I haven't read the article since the 70s, so my memory of combatants and who did what is somewhat vague...
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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