This article explores the origins of stone-throwing siege engines, their technological evolution, their use in different cultures and periods, and their lasting influence on both warfare and engineering.
Early Beginnings: The Origins of Stone-Throwing Siege Engines
The concept of using mechanical devices to hurl projectiles dates back to ancient times, with the earliest evidence of siege engines appearing during the classical antiquity period.
Ancient Mesopotamia and Early Projectile Weapons
While the earliest humans used simple tools such as slings to throw stones, the leap to mechanical devices occurred much later. There is no definitive evidence that early Mesopotamian civilizations (circa 3000 BCE) used mechanical siege engines, but they certainly developed complex military strategies and fortifications.
The use of mechanical projectile weapons likely emerged to overcome increasingly sophisticated defensive walls and fortifications, which began to be built more robustly around 2000 BCE. shutdown123