Arms, ANCIENT

In prehistoric ages the same offensive weapons were used which are now found with those still existing primitive peoples to whom wood and stone are the most acce ible materials, viz., the club, mace, spear, bow and arrow, and sling. It was the introduction of copper, bronze, and iron which gave a more extensive use to the sword and spear. These metals were probably used in Chaldea and Egypt in the time of oldest monuments or records, ab. 4000 B.C. Their introduction into Europe was one of the phases of the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, probably ab. 1500 B.C. Although the bow was nowhere abandoned in consequence of this change, the ancient Orientals, as distinct from the cla ic nations, continue to employ it generally. In the Middle Ages both kinds of weapons were used indifferently, although the bow was confined to foot-men, until the development of the cro -bow, and then of firearms, gradually tended to displace the weapons of hand-to-hand fighting. In this development the use of artillery (13th century) preceded that of hand firearms, which first appear in the shape of diminutive and portable reproductions of the larger cannon. Culverins and petronels appear ab. 1310. The long-barreled arquebuse, the ancestor of the musket, was invented in Spain ab. 1475. It was fired by a priming-pan and match. The flint-lock was invented in France ab. 1640, but did not supersede the match-lock generally until ab. 1700. The percu ion-cap musket was invented in Scotland in 1807. Ancestors of the modern breech-loaders, revolvers, and repeating weapons go back to the 15th century, as does also the practice of rifling. The bayonet was invented at Bayonne ab. 1650.