The club is one of the oldest weapons used by man, clubs they are easily fashioned from branches. Strong and shock absorbing, wood is an almost perfect material for making many implements, weapons among them. Its lightness on the other hand is a drawback when the intention is to hit ones opponent over the head with it in order to crack his skull.
The mace is another anciant Mesopotamian weapon. A mace is a wooden club with a head of some hard and heavy material fastened to it. Stone suggested itself to ancient weaponmakers: it was easily available and could be shaped with proven techniques. There were two difficulties to overcome, though. Stone shatters relatively easily and a reliable fixing of the head to the wooden handle was difficult to achieve. With the advent of copper both these obstacles could be overcome, despite the expense and difficulty of extracting and casting copper.
Improvements to the mace were few. The Egyptians tried to give them a disk shaped form in order to increase their impact or even endow them with some cutting capabilities, but with improving defensive equipment the mace disappeared as a fighting weapon, and gave way to the battle axe. According to the archaeological records disk and pear-shaped mace heads were frequently used, in contrast to all the other forms which were unusual.
No comments:
Post a Comment