Roman Weapons Research Paper

Every living creature fights to survive. It is an inbred instinct for a living thing to do what is necessary to continue its life and ensure its individual and species survival, whether that means tearing apart its prey or its enemies. Not till the modern human, however, has there been a creature able and willing to innovate upon this part of its base animal nature, to create the art of warfare out of necessity. This art, however, is like any other in that it is both reflective of and dependent on the society it is created by. Physical and economic resources, education of creative minds, and a climate of necessity are all fundamental components for any technological innovation, and it is for this reason that advances in weaponry can tell us

Losing the protection of a unified central government in the Middle Ages caused a resurgence of combat as an individual art form. Every culture requires violence in a different capacity, calling upon creators within for the tools to fulfill that purpose and telling us much about the society they originated from. Beginning with their earliest nature-crafted iterations in prehistoric times, weapons fall into two main categories: shock weapons, used to strike, and missile weapons, to be launched at an enemy. An early example of a shock weapon could be the film-favorite caveman's club, while the first missile weapon would likely have been a rock flung at an enemy. Though the use of tools began, millions of years ago, as simple, ingenious adaptation of the natural world existing around us, it did not take long for humanity's ancestors to grasp their ability to shape that world to their own uses. The weaponry of the prehistoric era reflects the scattered, disorganized nature of early humanity, as all surviving examples, though potentially useful in confrontations with other humans, had primary function in practical matters such as