Run away, run away
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 ...
2 SOUTHERN GREECE: eighth century BC, in Greek mythology, Hercules attacks the hydra.
3 KIRRHA, a Greek harbor town, sixth century BC, Sacred War, Athens and other Greek city-states attack.
4 TYRE: 332 BC, Alexnader the Great attacks the Phoenicians, who counter by catapulting red-hot sand onto their enemies, in what is present day South Lebanon.
5 HATRA: 198 AD, Rome attacks the city, in what is now Iraq. Hatrans counter by pouring burning petroleum on the Romans.
Visit the site for the entire article.ULTRA COOL and super interesting!
Adrienne Mayor is a "folklorist" who manages to extract from a few clay tablets that Berkeley anti-war protestors have been with us a long time. How many existed when we annihilated the American Indians not too long ago? I think the truth is anti-patriotic leftism is a relatively new thinking disorder that can eventually destroy America.
My fetus, I mean sister(50+) is a 7th month premmie.. fetus indeed.. like she was a fetus and moments later a baby by barbarian speak... THIS you can NOT blame on democrats either.. life is pretty CHEAP in the United States...
FReegards,
I too was intrigued by the idea of tossing burning sand at the enemy. And as far as the feasability, the first thing I thought of was running barefoot across the burning sand of a beach.
Also, there is the semi-conductive property of silicon, making it able to retain heat more efficiently than, say iron or aluminum. I think it would work.
Yeah, and they dumped animal carcasses in the wells to poison the enemy's woter supply, too.
The Orcish armies did that in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Nasty, nasty scene.
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