Ancient

 Weapons, as man-made things, with the purpose of killing or harming living things, were used in the war. Weapons are of great significance because mankind wanted to win the war unharmed, which means one side must kill the other quickly and deadly. As the only tool man could use, the level of weapons decides the live or death, mostly.

At ancient times, materials that human being could access to were far limited, which were only ones came directly from nature, like wood, stone, bones, etc. As a half man-made thing, weapons in that time was only used to hunt in order to survive. Wars were only between human being and nature. Weapons, as the major tools for human being to survive, were developed in order to get more efficiency.

With the development of productive forces, there were enough food for everyone to survive and even some left. As the left things got accumulated, selfish was firstly came up and this led to the fights between man and man, which was "true war" or the war we now defined.

In order to win the war, mankind were forced to invent more powerful weapons. But the renovation of weapons need great society source support, which means the richer a society was, the more advanced weapons they probably own. Of course there were exceptions. Like China in Qing dynastic.

So on this level, the relationship between weapons and the level of society was some how promote each other.

Description

Finally, we have narrow our search down;
We will be describing how the equipment of all the different types of soldiers has evolve as a consequence of the discovery of new materials, or the modification in the methods used to obtain them.

We have divided the progress in 8 different groups. These are:

-Ancient: Includes tribal warriors from ancient Mesopotamia, ancient china, and all the pre-colombian mayor cultures i.e. Inca, Maya and Aztec.

-Greek and Roman: Includes the warriors from ancient Greece and Rome. Probably the most representative warriors are the greek hoplites and the roman legionaries.

-Medieval: Includes the fully armored medieval knights. The horses, even though they represent an important part of the war machinery, have been left aside for simplicity.

 -Independance and Napoleonic: Includes the warriors that were involved in independance wars in the americas, as well as in the napoleonic wars in europe.

-WWI: Typical American and Birtish troops (leaving aside tanks, war vehicles, planes, ships, etc..) during the first world war.

-WWII: Typical German  troops during the second world war, leaving aside any other war machinery.

-Vietnam: American troops during the vietnam war.

-Irak and Afganistan: American troops today.

Intro

Hey guys.

I wanted to start with the blog, and perhaps offer a first structural format to the project.

War, although is s bit of a narrow topic when compared to the whole civilization, is still quite broad. Perhaps we could start by either dividing war into sub-categories and describe them briefly while we advance in time along history.

A couple of these sub-categories could be:

a.) weapons by user:  What person, or military unit uses the weapon.

b.) weapons by function: The construction of the weapon ans principle of  operation.

c.) weapons by target: Type of target the weapon is designed to attack.

Now, these categories are not mutually exclusive, we should probably pick one and stick to it, or the will overlap (no problem with that, but it bothers my sense of organization..lol).

I would propose to go with the ''by function'' category, and here is why: If you check Wikipedia (which is where these categories are from) you will see that for example the ''by user'' category is still quite broad in itself. For example ''vehicle weapons'' the list of vehicle weapons is quite large and there are probably sub-sub-sub categories inside it; It seems to me that we will be doing meaningless listing and we don't have enough time for that.

The category "by target" is more specific, but as you can check by yourselves, it spans very modern times (Aircraft, submarine, satellite, tanks...etc) and we would have empty hand for older periods...its not evenly distributed along the time axis ;)

On the other hand, the "by function'' (or purpose) category is perfect for us. It spans all the historical eras and since its based on the functionality of the weapon, we wouldn't be doing meaningless listing, but instead, we would describe why they are good for that purpose from the material-science point of view.

If you have a better structure, post it, and we could discuss it.

Cheers,

Luis

PS: Here is the classification of weapons by functions:

• Antimatter weapons (theoretical) would combine matter and antimatter to cause a powerful explosion.
• Archery weapons operate by using a tensioned string and bent solid to launch a projectile.
• Artillery are firearms capable of launching heavy projectiles over long distances, which can explode on impact.
• Biological weapons spread biological agents, causing disease or infection.
• Chemical weapons, poisoning and causing reactions.
• Energy weapons rely on concentrating forms of energy to attack, such as lasers or sonic attack.
• Explosive weapons use a physical explosion to create blast concussion or spread shrapnel.
• Firearms use a chemical charge to launch projectiles.
• Improvised weapons are common objects, reused as weapons, such as crowbars and kitchen knives.
• Incendiary weapons cause damage by fire.
• Non-lethal weapons are designed to subdue without killing.
• Magnetic weapons use magnetic fields to propel projectiles, or to focus particle beams.
• Mêlée weapons operate as physical extensions of the user's body and directly impact their target.
• Missiles are rockets which are guided to their target after launch. (Also a general term for projectile weapons).
• Nuclear weapons use radioactive materials to create nuclear fission and/or nuclear fusion detonations.
• Primitive weapons make little or no use of technological or industrial elements.
• Ranged weapons (unlike Mêlée weapons), target a distant object or person.
• Rockets use chemical propellant to accelerate a projectile
• Suicide weapons exploit the willingness of their operator to not survive the attack.
• Trojan weapons appear on face value to be gifts, though the intent is to in some way harm the recipient.