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Sick Rams Used as Ancient Bioweapons Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Once, a Weapon Nov. 28, 2007 -- Infected rams and donkeys were the earliest bioweapons, according to a new study which dates the use of biological warfare back more than 3,300 years. According to a review published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses, two ancient populations, the Arzawans and the Hittites, engaged "in mutual use of contaminated animals" during the 1320-1318 B.C. Anatolian war. "The animals were carriers of Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia," author Siro Trevisanato, a molecular biologist based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada told Discovery News....

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...

If you are under Roman siege in the middle of a desert, a scorpion bomb seems like a very good idea. Collect a bunch of lethal scorpions and, very carefully, seal them in clay pots. Hurl the pots at the attackers as needed. That's exactly what the defenders of Hatra, just south of Mosul in today's Iraq, did in 198 AD. The siege was lifted in 20 days. As Adrienne Mayor writes in her intriguing book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, scorpions weren't the only stinging animals pressed into service in the ancient world. A clay pot full...