The technology of war may be divided into five categories.

Offensive arms harm the enemy,

while defensive weapons ward off offensive blows. Transportation technology moves soldiers
and weaponry; communications coordinate the movements of armed forces; and sensors detect
forces and guide weaponry.

From the earliest times, a critical relationship has existed between military technology, the
tactics of its employment, and the psychological factors that bind its users into units. Success in
combat, the sine qua non of military organizations and the ultimate purpose of military
technology, depends on the ability of the combatant group to coordinate the actions of its
members in a tactically effective manner. This coordination is a function of the strength of the
forces that bind the unit together, inducing its members to set aside their individual interests—
even life itself—for the welfare of the group. These forces, in turn, are directly affected both by
tactics and by technology.

The influence of technology can be either positive or negative. The experience of the ancient Greek
hoplite infantrymen is one example of positive influence. Their arms and armour were most effective for
fighting in close formation, which led in turn to marching in step, which further augmented cohesion
and made the phalanx a tactically formidable formation. The late medieval knight offers an example of
the negative influence of technology. To wield his sword and lance effectively, he and his charger
needed considerable space, yet his closed helmet made communication with his fellows extremely
difficult. It is not surprising, then, that knights of the late Middle Ages tended to fight as individuals and
were often defeated by cohesive units of less well-equipped opponents.

This article traces the development of military technology by historical period, from prehistory to the
18th century. For a discussion of modern military technology, see small arm, artillery, rocket and missile
system, nuclear weapon, chemical warfare, biological warfare, fortification, tank, naval ship, submarine,
military aircraft, warning system, and military communication.

A general treatment of the actual waging of war is found in war, with more specific discussions
appearing in such articles as strategy, tactics, and logistics. The social sciences of war, such as
economics, law, and the theory of its origins, are also covered in that article. For a military
history of World Wars I and II, see World War I and World War II.

Warfare requires the use of technologies that also have nonmilitary applications. For descriptions
of the propulsion systems used in military vehicles, ships, aircraft, and missiles, see energy
conversion; for the manufacture of explosives, see explosives. The principles of radar, and its
military applications, are covered in radar. For the principles of aircraft flight, see airplane.

John F. Guilmartin

General considerations
In the remote past, the diffusion of military technology was gradual and uneven. There were
several reasons for this. First, transport was slow and its capacity small. Second, the technology
of agriculture was no more advanced than that of war, so that, with most of their energy devoted
to feeding themselves and with little economic surplus, people had few resources available for
specialized military technology. Low economic development meant that even the benefits of
conquest would not pay off a heavy investment in weaponry. Third, and most important, the
absolute level of technological development was low. A heavy dependence on human muscle
was the principal cause and a major effect of this low level of development. With human
ingenuity bound by the constraints of the human body, both technology and tactics were heavily
shaped by geography, climate, and topography.

The importance of geographic and topographic factors, along with limited means of
communication and transportation, meant that separate geographic regions tended to develop
unique military technologies. Such areas are called military ecospheres. The boundaries of a
military ecosphere might be physical barriers, such as oceans or mountain ranges; they might
also be changes in the military topography, that combination of terrain, vegetation, and man-
made features that could render a particular technology or tactic effective or ineffective.

Until the late 15th century ce, when advances in transportation technology broke down the
barriers between them, the world contained a number of military ecospheres. The most clearly
defined of these were based in Mesoamerica, Japan, India–Southeast Asia, China, and Europe.
(In this context, Europe includes all of the Mediterranean basin and the watershed of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers.) With the appearance of the horse archer in late antiquity, the Eurasian
Steppe became a well-defined military ecosphere as well.

Those ecospheres with the most enduring impact on the technology of war were the European
and Chinese. Though Japan possessed a distinctive, coherent, and effective military technology,
it had little influence on developments elsewhere. India–Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica
developed technologies that were well adapted to local conditions, but they were not particularly
advanced. The Eurasian Steppe was a special case: usually serving as an avenue for a limited
exchange of knowledge between Europe and China, in the late classical and medieval eras of
Europe it developed an indigenous military technology based on the horse and composite
recurved bow that challenged Europe and ultimately conquered China.
Samurai on horseback, drawing, late 19th century.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Improved methods of transportation and warfare led to the eventual disappearance of the
regional ecospheres and their absorption into the European ecosphere. This process began in the
12th century with the Mongol conquest of China and invasions of Europe, and it quickened and
assumed a more pronounced European flavour in the 15th and 16th centuries with the
development of oceangoing ships armed with gunpowder weapons.

Because European methods of warfare ultimately dominated the world, and because the
technology of war, with few exceptions, advanced first and fastest in Europe, this article devotes
most of its attention to the European military ecosphere. It traces the technology of land war in
that ecosphere from Stone Age weapons to the early guns. For reasons of continuity, warships
from before the gunpowder era are discussed with modern naval ships and craft in the article
naval ship.
Military technology
key people

 Chaim Herzog
 Robert Morris Page

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 Technology

Prehistory
The earliest military weapons
The earliest evidence for a specialized technology of war dates from the period before
knowledge of metalworking had been acquired. The stone walls of Jericho, which date from
about 8000 bce, represent the first technology that can be ascribed unequivocally to purely
military purposes. These walls, at least 13 feet (4 metres) in height and backed by a watchtower
or redoubt some 28 feet tall, were clearly intended to protect the settlement and its water supply
from human intruders.

When the defenses of Jericho were built, humans already had been using the weapons of the hunt
for millennia; the earliest stone tools are hundreds of thousands of years old, and the first
arrowheads date to more than 60,000 years ago. Hunting tools—the spear-thrower (atlatl), the
simple bow, the javelin, and the sling—had serious military potential, but the first known
implements designed purposely as offensive weapons were maces dating from the Chalcolithic
Period or early Bronze Age. The mace was a simple rock, shaped for the hand and intended to
smash bone and flesh, to which a handle had been added to increase the velocity and force of the
blow.
It is evident that the technical problems of hafting a stone onto a handle were not easily solved.
Well-made maces were for a long time few in number and were, by and large, wielded only by
champions and rulers. The earliest known inscription identifying a historical personage by name
is on the palette of King Narmer, a small, low-relief slate sculpture dating from about 3100 bce.
The palette depicts Menes, the first pharaoh of a unified Egypt, ritually smashing the forehead of
an enemy with a mace.

Figure perhaps representing Menes on a victory tablet of Egyptian King Narmer, c. 2925–c. 2775
bce.Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich

The advent of the mace as a purposely designed offensive weapon opened the door to the
conscious innovation of specialized military technology. By the middle of the 3rd millennium
bce, mace heads were being cast of copper, first in Mesopotamia and then in Syria, Palestine, and
Egypt. The copper mace head, yielding higher density and greater crushing power, represents
one of the earliest significant uses of metal for other than ornamental purposes.

From precious metals to base metals

The dividing line between the utilitarian and the symbolic in warfare has never been clear and
unequivocal, and this line is particularly difficult to find in the design and construction of early
weaponry. The engineering principles that dictated functional effectiveness were not understood
in any systematic fashion, yet the psychological reality of victory or defeat was starkly evident.
The result was an “unscientific” approach to warfare and technology, in which materials appear
to have been applied to military purposes as much for their presumed mystical or magical
properties as for their functional worth.

This overlapping of symbolism and usefulness is most evident in the smith’s choice of materials.
Ornaments and ceremonial artifacts aside, metalworking was applied to the production of
weaponry as early as, or earlier than, any other economically significant pursuit. Precious metals,
with their low melting points and great malleability, were worked first; next came copper—at
first pure, then alloyed with arsenic or tin to produce bronze—and then iron. A remarkable
phenomenon was the persistence of weaponry made of the soft, rare metals, such as gold, silver,
and electrum (a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver), long after mechanically superior
materials had become available. Although they were functionally inferior to bronze or copper,
precious metals were widely valued for their mystical or symbolic importance, and smiths
continued to make weapons of them long after they had mastered the working of functionally
superior base metals. Some of these weapons were plainly ceremonial, but in other cases they
appear to have been functional. For example, helmets and body armour of electrum, which were
probably intended for actual use, have been found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian burials dating
from the 2nd and 3rd millennia bce.

Antiquity and the classical age, c. 1000 bce–400 ce

From the appearance of iron weaponry in quantity during late antiquity until the fall of Rome,
the means with which war was waged and the manner in which it was conducted displayed many
enduring characteristics that gave the period surprising unity. Prominent features of that unity
were a continuity in the design of individual weaponry, a relative lack of change in transportation
technology, and an enduring tactical dominance of heavy infantry.
Macedonian battle formationThe battle formation developed by Macedonian King Philip II
and his son Alexander the Great improved the phalanx.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Perhaps the strongest underlying technological feature of the period was the heavy reliance on
human muscle, which retained a tactical primacy that contrasted starkly with medieval times,
when the application of horse power became a prime ingredient of victory. (There were two
major, if partial, exceptions to this prevailing feature: the success of horse archers in the great
Eurasian Steppe during late classical times and the decisive use in the 4th century bce of shock
cavalry by the armies of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. However, the
defeat of Roman legions by Parthian horse archers at Carrhae in western Mesopotamia in 53 bce
marked merely a shifting of boundaries between ecospheres on topographical grounds rather than
any fundamental change within the core of the European ecosphere itself. Also, the shock
cavalry of Philip and Alexander was an exception so rare as to prove the rule; moreover, their
decisiveness was made possible by the power of the Macedonian infantry phalanx.) Heavy
infantry remained the dominant European military institution until it was overthrown in the 4th
century ce by a system of war in which shock cavalry played the central role.

Classical technologists never developed an efficient means of applying animal traction to

haulage on land, no doubt because agricultural resources in even the most advanced areas were
incapable of supporting meaningful numbers of horses powerful enough to make the effort
worthwhile. Carts were heavy and easily broken, and the throat-and-girth harness for horses,
mules, and donkeys put pressure on the animals’ windpipes and neck veins, severely restricting
the amount they could pull. The yoke-and-pole harness for oxen was relatively efficient and oxen
could pull heavy loads, but they were extremely slow. A human porter, on the other hand, was
just as efficient as a pack horse in weight carried per unit of food consumed. The best recipe for
mobility, therefore, was to restrict pack animals to the minimum needed for carrying bulky items
such as essential rations, tents, and firewood, to use carts only for items such as siege engines
that could be carried in no other way, and to require soldiers to carry all their personal equipment
and some of their food.

On the other hand, mastery of wood and bronze for military purposes reached a level during this
period that was seldom, if ever, attained afterward. Surviving patterns for the Roman military
boot, the caliga, suggest equally high standards of craftsmanship in leatherworking, and the
standards of carpentry displayed on classical ships were almost impossibly high when measured
against those of later eras.

Defensive weaponry
The design and production of individual defensive equipment was restricted by the shape of the
human form that it had to protect; at the same time, it placed heavy demands on the smith’s
skills. The large areas to be protected, restrictions on the weight that a combatant could carry, the
difficulty of forging metal into the complex contours required, and cost all conspired to force
constant change.
armourThe development of Western body armour through the centuries.Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc.

The technology of defensive weapons was rarely static. Evidence exists of an ancient contest
between offensive and defensive weaponry, with defensive weaponry at first leading the way. By
3000 bce Mesopotamian smiths had learned to craft helmets of copper-and-arsenic bronze,
which, no doubt worn with a well-padded leather lining, largely neutralized the offensive
advantages of the mace. By 2500 bce the Sumerians were making helmets of bronze, along with
bronze spearheads and ax blades. The weapon smiths’ initial response to the helmet was to
augment the crushing power of the mace by casting the head in an ellipsoidal form that
concentrated more force at the point of impact. Then, as technical competence increased, the
ellipsoidal head became a cutting edge, and by this process the mace evolved into the ax. The
contest between mace and helmet initiated a contest between offensive and defensive technology
that continued throughout history.

Helmets
The helmet, though arguably the earliest focus of the armourer’s craft, was one of the most
demanding challenges. Forging an integral, one-piece dome of metal capable of covering the
entire head was extremely difficult. The Corinthian Greek helmet, a deep bowl-shaped helmet of
carefully graduated thickness forged from a single piece of bronze, probably represented the
functional as well as aesthetic apex of the bronze worker’s art. Many classical Greek helmets of
bronze were joined by a seam down the crown.

Corinthian-style helmetCorinthian-style helmet, bronze, Greek, c. 600–575 bce; in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.Photograph by Stephen Sandoval. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, Dodge Fund, 1955 (55.11.10)

Iron helmets followed the evolution of iron mail, itself a sophisticated and relatively late
development. The legionnaire of the early Roman Republic wore a helmet of bronze, while his
successor in the Empire of the 1st century ce wore one of iron.

More About This Topic

  20th-century international relations: Science and technology in wartime
 Ancient Greek civilization: Military technology
 World War II: Technology of war, 1918–39
 History of technology: Military technology
 Law of war: Weapons

Prehistory
The earliest military weapons
The earliest evidence for a specialized technology of war dates from the period before
knowledge of metalworking had been acquired. The stone walls of Jericho, which date from
about 8000 bce, represent the first technology that can be ascribed unequivocally to purely
military purposes. These walls, at least 13 feet (4 metres) in height and backed by a watchtower
or redoubt some 28 feet tall, were clearly intended to protect the settlement and its water supply
from human intruders.

When the defenses of Jericho were built, humans already had been using the weapons of the hunt
for millennia; the earliest stone tools are hundreds of thousands of years old, and the first
arrowheads date to more than 60,000 years ago. Hunting tools—the spear-thrower (atlatl), the
simple bow, the javelin, and the sling—had serious military potential, but the first known
implements designed purposely as offensive weapons were maces dating from the Chalcolithic
Period or early Bronze Age. The mace was a simple rock, shaped for the hand and intended to
smash bone and flesh, to which a handle had been added to increase the velocity and force of the
blow.

It is evident that the technical problems of hafting a stone onto a handle were not easily solved.
Well-made maces were for a long time few in number and were, by and large, wielded only by
champions and rulers. The earliest known inscription identifying a historical personage by name
is on the palette of King Narmer, a small, low-relief slate sculpture dating from about 3100 bce.
The palette depicts Menes, the first pharaoh of a unified Egypt, ritually smashing the forehead of
an enemy with a mace.

The advent of the mace as a purposely designed offensive weapon opened the door to the
conscious innovation of specialized military technology. By the middle of the 3rd millennium
bce, mace heads were being cast of copper, first in Mesopotamia and then in Syria, Palestine, and
Egypt. The copper mace head, yielding higher density and greater crushing power, represents
one of the earliest significant uses of metal for other than ornamental purposes.

From precious metals to base metals

The dividing line between the utilitarian and the symbolic in warfare has never been clear and
unequivocal, and this line is particularly difficult to find in the design and construction of early
weaponry. The engineering principles that dictated functional effectiveness were not understood
in any systematic fashion, yet the psychological reality of victory or defeat was starkly evident.
The result was an “unscientific” approach to warfare and technology, in which materials appear
to have been applied to military purposes as much for their presumed mystical or magical
properties as for their functional worth.

This overlapping of symbolism and usefulness is most evident in the smith’s choice of materials.
Ornaments and ceremonial artifacts aside, metalworking was applied to the production of
weaponry as early as, or earlier than, any other economically significant pursuit. Precious metals,
with their low melting points and great malleability, were worked first; next came copper—at
first pure, then alloyed with arsenic or tin to produce bronze—and then iron. A remarkable
phenomenon was the persistence of weaponry made of the soft, rare metals, such as gold, silver,
and electrum (a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver), long after mechanically superior
materials had become available. Although they were functionally inferior to bronze or copper,
precious metals were widely valued for their mystical or symbolic importance, and smiths
continued to make weapons of them long after they had mastered the working of functionally
superior base metals. Some of these weapons were plainly ceremonial, but in other cases they
appear to have been functional. For example, helmets and body armour of electrum, which were
probably intended for actual use, have been found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian burials dating
from the 2nd and 3rd millennia bce.

Antiquity and the classical age, c. 1000 bce–400 ce

From the appearance of iron weaponry in quantity during late antiquity until the fall of Rome,
the means with which war was waged and the manner in which it was conducted displayed many
enduring characteristics that gave the period surprising unity. Prominent features of that unity
were a continuity in the design of individual weaponry, a relative lack of change in transportation
technology, and an enduring tactical dominance of heavy infantry.

Perhaps the strongest underlying technological feature of the period was the heavy reliance on
human muscle, which retained a tactical primacy that contrasted starkly with medieval times,
when the application of horse power became a prime ingredient of victory. (There were two
major, if partial, exceptions to this prevailing feature: the success of horse archers in the great
Eurasian Steppe during late classical times and the decisive use in the 4th century bce of shock
cavalry by the armies of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. However, the
defeat of Roman legions by Parthian horse archers at Carrhae in western Mesopotamia in 53 bce
marked merely a shifting of boundaries between ecospheres on topographical grounds rather than
any fundamental change within the core of the European ecosphere itself. Also, the shock
cavalry of Philip and Alexander was an exception so rare as to prove the rule; moreover, their
decisiveness was made possible by the power of the Macedonian infantry phalanx.) Heavy
infantry remained the dominant European military institution until it was overthrown in the 4th
century ce by a system of war in which shock cavalry played the central role.

Classical technologists never developed an efficient means of applying animal traction to

haulage on land, no doubt because agricultural resources in even the most advanced areas were
incapable of supporting meaningful numbers of horses powerful enough to make the effort
worthwhile. Carts were heavy and easily broken, and the throat-and-girth harness for horses,
mules, and donkeys put pressure on the animals’ windpipes and neck veins, severely restricting
the amount they could pull. The yoke-and-pole harness for oxen was relatively efficient and oxen
could pull heavy loads, but they were extremely slow. A human porter, on the other hand, was
just as efficient as a pack horse in weight carried per unit of food consumed. The best recipe for
mobility, therefore, was to restrict pack animals to the minimum needed for carrying bulky items
such as essential rations, tents, and firewood, to use carts only for items such as siege engines
that could be carried in no other way, and to require soldiers to carry all their personal equipment
and some of their food.

On the other hand, mastery of wood and bronze for military purposes reached a level during this
period that was seldom, if ever, attained afterward. Surviving patterns for the Roman military
boot, the caliga, suggest equally high standards of craftsmanship in leatherworking, and the
standards of carpentry displayed on classical ships were almost impossibly high when measured
against those of later eras.

Defensive weaponry
The design and production of individual defensive equipment was restricted by the shape of the
human form that it had to protect; at the same time, it placed heavy demands on the smith’s
skills. The large areas to be protected, restrictions on the weight that a combatant could carry, the
difficulty of forging metal into the complex contours required, and cost all conspired to force
constant change.

The technology of defensive weapons was rarely static. Evidence exists of an ancient contest
between offensive and defensive weaponry, with defensive weaponry at first leading the way. By
3000 bce Mesopotamian smiths had learned to craft helmets of copper-and-arsenic bronze,
which, no doubt worn with a well-padded leather lining, largely neutralized the offensive
advantages of the mace. By 2500 bce the Sumerians were making helmets of bronze, along with
bronze spearheads and ax blades. The weapon smiths’ initial response to the helmet was to
augment the crushing power of the mace by casting the head in an ellipsoidal form that
concentrated more force at the point of impact. Then, as technical competence increased, the
ellipsoidal head became a cutting edge, and by this process the mace evolved into the ax. The
contest between mace and helmet initiated a contest between offensive and defensive technology
that continued throughout history.

Helmets
The helmet, though arguably the earliest focus of the armourer’s craft, was one of the most
demanding challenges. Forging an integral, one-piece dome of metal capable of covering the
entire head was extremely difficult. The Corinthian Greek helmet, a deep bowl-shaped helmet of
carefully graduated thickness forged from a single piece of bronze, probably represented the
functional as well as aesthetic apex of the bronze worker’s art. Many classical Greek helmets of
bronze were joined by a seam down the crown.
Corinthian-style helmetCorinthian-style helmet, bronze, Greek, c. 600–575 bce; in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City.Photograph by Stephen Sandoval. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York City, Dodge Fund, 1955 (55.11.10)

Iron helmets followed the evolution of iron mail, itself a sophisticated and relatively late
development. The legionnaire of the early Roman Republic wore a helmet of bronze, while his
successor in the Empire of the 1st century ce wore one of iron.

Shields
Shields were used for hunting long before they were used for warfare, partly for defense and
partly for concealment in stalking game, and it is likely that the military shield evolved from that
of the hunter and herdsman. The size and composition of shields varied greatly, depending on the
tactical demands of the user. In general, the more effective the protection afforded by body
armour, the smaller the shield; similarly, the longer the reach of the soldier’s weapon, the smaller
his shield. The Greek hoplite, a heavy infantryman who fought in closely packed formation,
acquired his name from the hoplon, a convex circular shield, approximately 3 feet (90 cm) in
diameter, made of composite wood and bronze. It was carried on the left arm by means of a
bronze strap that passed across the forearm and a rope looped around the inner rim with
sufficient slack to be gripped in the fist. In the 4th century bce the soldier of the Roman
Republic, who fought primarily with the spear, carried an oval shield, while the later imperial
legionnaire, who closed in with a short sword, protected himself with the scutum, a large
cylindrical shield of leather-clad wood that covered most of his body.

Body armour
Padded garments, and perhaps armour of hardened leather, preceded edged metal weapons. It
was then a logical, if expensive, step to cast or forge small metal plates and sew them onto a
protective garment. These provided real protection against arrow, spear, or mace, and the small
scales, perforated for attachment, were a far less demanding technical challenge than even the
simplest helmet. Armour of overlapping scales of bronze, laced together or sewn onto a backing
of padded fabric, is well represented in pictorial evidence and burial items from Mesopotamia,
Palestine, and Egypt from about 1500 bce, though its use was probably restricted to a small elite.

Bronze
By classical times, breastplates of bronze, at first beaten and then cast to the warrior’s individual
shape, had become commonplace among heavy infantry and elite cavalry. Greaves, defenses for
the lower leg, closely followed the breastplate. At first these were forged of bronze plates; some
classical Greek examples were cast to such fine tolerances that they sprang open and could be
snapped onto the calf. Defenses for more remote portions of the body, such as vambraces for the
forearm and defenses for the ankle resembling spats, were included in Greek temple dedications,
but they were probably not common in field service.

Bronze was the most common metal for body defenses well into the Iron Age, a consequence of
the fact that it could be worked in large pieces without extended hand forging and careful
tempering, while iron had to be forged from relatively small billets.

Mail
The first practical body armour of iron was mail, which made its appearance in Hellenistic times
but became common only during the Roman Imperial period. (Bronze mail was impractical
because of the insufficient strength of the alloy.) Mail, or chain mail, was made of small rings of
iron, typically of one-half-inch diameter or less, linked into a protective fabric. The rings were
fastened together in patterns of varying complexity depending on the degree of protection
desired; in general, smaller, lighter rings fastened in dense, overlapping patterns meant lighter,
better protection. The fabrication of mail was extremely labour-intensive. The earliest mail was
made of hand-forged links, each individual link riveted together. Later, armourers used punches
of hardened iron to cut rings from sheets: this reduced the labour involved and, hence, the cost.
Trajan's ColumnA relief from Trajan's Column, a monument from the early 2nd century ce, showing
Roman legionnaires in armour of the period.© Benjamín Núñez González (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The earliest evidence of mail is depicted on Greek sculpture and friezes dating from the 3rd
century bce, though this kind of protection might be considerably older (there is some evidence
that it might be of Celtic origin). Little else is known about the use of mail by the Greeks, but the
Roman legionnaire was equipped with a lorica hamata, a mail shirt, from a very early date. Mail
was extremely flexible and provided good protection against cutting and piercing weapons. Its
main disadvantage was its weight, which tended to hang from the shoulders and waist. In
addition, strips of mail tended to curl at the edges; the Romans solved this problem by lacing
mail shoulder defenses to leather plates. In the 1st century ce the legionnaire’s mail shirt gave
way to a segmented iron torso defense, the lorica segmentata.

Plate-iron armour
While some early forged bronze armour was technically plate, the introduction of the lorica
segmentata heralded the production of practical plate armour on a large scale. In general, the
term plate would imply a uniform thickness of metal, and only iron could provide reasonably
effective protection with uniform thickness without excessive weight.

While the Republican legionnaire’s lorica hamata hung to the midthigh, his imperial successor’s
lorica segmentata covered only the shoulders and torso. On the whole, classical plate armour
probably provided better protection against smashing and heavy piercing blows, while a shirt of
well-made mail covered more of the body and, hence, afforded better protection against slashing
blows and missiles.

Offensive weaponry
Development of the offensive technology of war was not as constrained by technological and
economic limitations as was defensive weaponry. Every significant offensive weapon was
widely available, while defensive equipment of high quality was almost always confined to the
elite. Perhaps as a consequence, a wide variety of individual offensive weapons appeared in
antiquity. One of the most striking facets of ancient military technology is the early date by
which individual weapons attained their form and the longevity of early offensive weapons
concepts. Some of the weapons of antiquity disappeared as practical military implements in
classical and medieval times, and all underwent modification, but, with the exception of the
halberd and crossbow, virtually every significant pre-gunpowder weapon was known in
antiquity.

The ax
Limitations on the strength of bronze and difficulties in casting and hafting restricted the ax at
first to a relatively broad blade mortised into a handle at three points and secured with bindings
or rivets. The hafting problem became acute as improvements in armour dictated longer,
narrower blades designed primarily for piercing rather than cutting. This led to the development
of socketed axes, in which the handle passed through a tubular hole cast in the ax head; both hole
and head were tapered from front to rear to prevent the head from flying off. This far stronger
hafting technique must have been accompanied by a significant improvement in the quality of
the metal itself. The pace and timing of these developments varied enormously from place to
place, depending on the local level of technology. Sumerian smiths were casting socketed ax
heads with narrow piercing blades by 2500 bce, while simple mortise-and-tenon hafting was still
being used in Egypt 1,000 years later.