MODERN WARFARE IS NOT SO MODERN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 21

MODERN WARFARE IS NOT SO MODERN

IN the olden days they had guns,] flame throwers, torpedoes, tanks, submarines—and even A.R.P.! writes R. W. Hudson in the "Adelaide Chronicle." Actually, the modern army is equipped with few weapons that were not thought of many hundreds of years ago. Take the "modern" steel helmet. It is an imitation of one that appeared in the middle ages. The famous "spiked" helmet (introduced in the Prussian Army in 1842) was the headgear of the ancient Cypriote soldiers. The German "camouflage" field grey uniform was used as early as the fifth century 8.C., by the Persian warriors of King Xerxes whilst the Greek general Xenephon had his soldiers cover their shining armour with cloth so as to make it less conspicuous to the enemy. Tinned meat, vegetables, fruit, etc., so important for modern army supplies, were known to the Romans as early as 250 B.C. In the fifteenth century tinned bread was used for army supplies in Germany. Meat-extracts were widely used by Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign. Soup cubes were first known in 1815. Tinned milk was used by the French Navy from 1827, meat biscuits by the British Navy from 1850. As early as 1798 they had field kitchens on wheels, each capable of acting as a travelling base where food for 1200 men could be prepared. Shotguns go back far into ancient times, the driving power having generally been supplied by bundled strings or metal springs. The ancient Romans had "guns" capable of throwing 501b stone balls a distance of 200 yards. Later, some of their "heavy

guns" would project stone or iron balls weighing up to 6001b so far as 800 yards. They even had a quick-firing gun as early as 230 B.C. Not unlike our modern machine-gun in principle, it i dispatched arrows at the rate of 100 i per minute.

As early as 424 B.C. (according to the, Greek historian Thucydides), the Boetians, for breaking .down armed cities, used large wooden tubes mounted on wheels and loaded with glowing coal, pitch, and sulphur. Bellows enabled flames to be spurted from the tubes. In other words, they used the highly modern war machine now called the flame thrower.

of pots full of poisonous snakes thrown at the enemy ships. Probably the oldest of all modern weapons is the tank. Even in the ninth century B.C. the Assyrians used armoured cars for preceding the army into battle. But it was not until 1558, j in Nuremberg, that the first tank on

The revolver • two and a half centuries before Samuel Colt; an eight-shooter revolving- pistol made by an unknown Nuremberg craftsman about the year 1600.

breech-loading were known as early as 1367, and in the fifteenth century they had big guns as long as 15 feet. Another device that is not very modern is the torpedo. The idea of "using an explosive rocket like a fish" is much older than one would think. The Arabs were the first to utilise it, in 1258. A more modern torpedo was built by the Italian Fontana. The name "torpedo" is taken from a fish capable of administering electrical shock. Hand-grenades, sometimes claimed

up-to-date lines was devised. In fact, it was a bit ahead of our times, because it was an amphibian—service- j able on water as well as on land. J Submarines are by no means new. The first one was constructed in 1623 by the Dutchman Cornelius van Drebbel. Diving and rising was effected by the filling or emptying of large leather bottles, and air was supplied to the crew through tubes reaching above the surface of the water.

Nor is the air raid idea such a very modern idea. It was thought of centuries ago, and seriously considered directly the gas balloon was invented. In 1804, Napoleon worked out a grand scheme for invading England by air. The voyage from France was achieved to take ten hours, and 2000 balloons were to be used to transport 132,000 soldiers, 450 guns, and 15,000 horses. This scheme even resulted in "air raid" precautions on tbe part of the British, who planned & kite-barrage!

It is gunpowder more than any- as an invention of the World War, thing which, since the fourteenth cen- were actually used in the year 360 tury, has revolutionised warfare. Yet B.C. in the form "of smouldering clay

the Chinese had known it as early as 300 B.C. For 1500 years, however, they used it exclusively for fireworks, and it was not until 1232, in defending the city of Pien-king against the Mongols, that they first thought of employing it in bombs and rocket arrows in war. In Germany, gunpowder was first used in 1326; the British used it twenty years later in the Battle of Crecy. The loading of these old-fashioned guns took anything from half an hour to an hour or more. Soon, early inventors thought of mounting several guns on a revolving disc, an idea which finally led to the evolution of the revolver. About 1550, Leonardo da Vinci designed a huge revolving gun with as many as sixty-four tubes. Guns with

balls thrown into the enemy camp. In the Middle Ages, soon after the discovery, or rather, rediscovery, of gunpcwder, hand-grenades were made explosive. It was their pomegranate shape which accounted for the word "grenade."

Believe it or not, one of the least modern of war implements is poison gas. Even in the Peloponnesian war the ancient Greeks used smoke and sulphur to gas the enemy. If ever bacteria warfare should be resorted to, this idea would not be so very new, either. The Roman general Septimus, in one of his campaigns, was repulsed through buckets full of poisonous insects being hurled at his legionaries, whilst Hannibal of Carthage won one of his sea battles by having hundreds

Many of Man's Weapons Have Existed in Some Form With Armies oj the Past

TTNTIL the discovery of human remains in a cave near Peking; now recognised as "Peking-man" or Sinanthropus pekingensis, very little indeed was learned about the menu of primitive mankind, says the "Christian Science Monitor." Not that there were any spare grocery bills or favourite recipes lying around in China.

But housekeepers in Jiose days had a unique location, so archaeologists say, for fragments from the dinner table. Right in the middle of the living room, or the most used portion of caves in which shelter was sought, they left not only the remains of prehistoric fires, but layer upon layer of animal bones and vegetable pits. And when the cave became so full there was no longer room for the occupants, the old homestead was deserted.

In Choukoutien (pronounced Cho-ko-tyen), some 30 miles west of Peking, a hill overlooks the town which today is the Mecca for the world's anthropologists. It contains the richest known remains pertaining to what may have been the earliest site of human habitation.

Apparently the cave was first oc-

THE MENU OF PRIMITIVE MAN

cupied during the Ice Age, yet the absence of telltale glaciation marks indicate)! that this area escaped its influence. Identification of bits of charred wood and seeds points to a climate quite similar to that of the present time. Because all the relics, plants or animal, are contained in almost solid rock, digging has been difficult. The caves are in limestone, which indicates that at one time, hundreds of millions of years ago, this part of China was beneath the sea

Then when the sea bottom was raised and became dry land again, and because of the dissolving power of water at work underground, caves were formed in the rocks of these hills. As centuries passed, portions of the caves became partly filled with rock fragments which fell from the walls or ceilings to become cemented together with all remains into a solid mass known as "breccia." The caves were found by Chinese workmen quarrying the limestone for building material, and as the breccia was impure, it was left untouched until the famous Swedish palaeontologist, J. G. Anderson, found in it the fossil bones of rhinoceros, bison, horses, and other game animals, that once roamed the country. -That started the rush of expeditions toward Choukoutien and marked the beginning of painstaking excavation of these masses.

Previously known human remains, Pithecanthropus erestus, the Java-man; and Eoanthropus, the Dawn-man from Piltdown, England, were known only from a few odd skeletal remains, hence there were no indications at all of the living conditions of their times. But in addition to the animal remains uncovered in the Chinese fossils, there were found, some 20 feet above the lowest level of human occupation, a layer of hackberry seeds several inches thick. How they got into the cave and broken to bits was a considerable mystery until researchers hit upon the idea that perhaps Sinanthropus used them as flavouring for meat or for bread, as did the native American Indians much later. The fruits can be crushed fine and the liquid strained away and cooked with other food, leaving just such a residue of shell fragments as, the excavators found. Here, then, is the earliest known re- } cord of plant food used by preIhistoric men.