Uploaded by MILITARY HISTORY 2015. A look at the Military History of Medieval and Stone Ages Weapons. We searches museums and private collections for weird and unlikely weapons, then introduces them to our combat team to find out how they were used. We try out a Francisca, the throwing axe that gave the Franks their name; see how armored knights used a ball and chain; and learn the uses of the gruesome awl-pike, bizarre military fork, and the Guisarme, an extremely popular polearm. We also test strange axes like the Lochaber, Doloire, and Waggoner’s Axe.
Part 2 starts at 20:54 and introduces us to Stone-Age weapons–flint or bone hand-axes, spears, bows, and slingshots–and shows us how to make them and how to fire-harden wooden spears. Paleontologists and ethnographers help us examine the weapons of primitive societies that have survived into our own time–assegais (slender hardwood spears), blowpipes, footbows, and boomerangs.
Much of what we know of ancient history is the history of militaries: their conquests, their movements, and their technological innovations. There are many reasons for this. Kingdoms and empires, the central units of control in the ancient world, could only be maintained through military force. Due to limited agricultural ability, there were relatively few areas that could support large communities, so fighting was common.
Weapons and armor, designed to be sturdy, tended to last longer than other artifacts, and thus a great deal of surviving artifacts recovered tend to fall in this category as they are more likely to survive. Weapons and armor were also mass-produced to a scale that makes them quite plentiful throughout history, and thus more likely to be found in archaeological digs.