The Amazing Catapult

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Recommended: The science of catapults

History of Catapults
Catapults are a very well known type of weapon. Yet not as many people know the true history of these fine instruments of siege warfare. Many people believe that catapults where a new and very often used technology in Medieval Ages, but the first catapults are said to have come during the time between 400 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. by the Chinese. Gee, they’ve pretty much invented everything. Anyways, the Middle Ages didn’t “start” until 476, so saying the catapult was first built at the latest date, it’s still 776 years until the Middle Ages. The first recorded use of siege in these ages of Middle timeline? The Viking siege of Paris, which started in 885 C.E. This brings our grand total up to 1,285 years of catapult evolution.Misinterpretations aside, we come to the true history. While not much detail is given of the Chinese catapults, I can state for certain that they were 8 feet tall. The next people to use the katapultos as they liked to call it, were the Greek. They were first used, in Greece, by Philip of Macedon, whose catapults could hurl rocks farther than any Chinese catapult. They were built using rope, wood, and animal guts. You read me right, guts. They would also use animal tendons and horsehair as their “rubber bands” because obviously, those didn’t exist yet. These powerful technological beasts were like the atom bomb of Ancient Greece era warfare. They were new, destructive, and feared by everyone except the owners. In fact, one military engineer stated that walls needed to be 15 feet thick to withstand these evil and fast-flying rocks. Before long, catapults were also brought to sea, revolutionizing sea warfare, also.
Next to find the catapults handy were the Romans. The catapults held on to the...

... middle of paper ...

...mely devastating, extremely scary, and, along with the catapult and siege tower, was used by the orcs in the Lord of the Rings. This was first used in the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta in 424 B.C.E.
Parts of a Catapult

Works Cited
Newcomb, Rain, Bobby Mercer, and Tom LaBaff. "Catapults." Smash It!, Crash It!, Launch It!: 50 Mind-blowing, Eye-popping Science Experiments. New York: Lark, 2006. 50-53. Print.
Vecchione, Glen. "Mechanics and Motion." 100 Award-winning Science Fair Projects. New York: Sterling Pub., 2001. 133. Print.
Woods, Michael, and Mary B. Woods. "Ancient Greece." Ancient Warfare: From Clubs to Catapults. Minneapolis: Runestone, 2000. 70-75. Print
. Millward, Adam. "Siege Warfare Weapons." How It Works. How It Works Daily, 23 Dec. 2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. .

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