Ancient Biological Warfare.

[Bewlay Bros]

What tribes, empires, armies etc and in what epoch of history did soldiers used to catapult human crap over the enemy and also fling rotting corpses in to their barracks thus initiating the first ever use of biological warfare?

[4GS]

Read this at your leisure

http://www.zkea.com/archives/archive01001.html

[Bewlay Bros]

So when was bacteria and germs (if they are not the same thing???) discovered?

[jake-the-peg]

Bacteria were discovered in the 17th Century but the link with disease wasn't made for another couple of hundred years.

However people knew that decomposing corpses could cause disease, a lot of early theories revolved around "bad air"

[spudqueen]

At half term I went to Warwick Castle where they fire a trebuchet after giving you a talk and demonstration - set in 1385. The bloke who was playing the Earl of Warwick said that one of his favourite things to fire into a beseiged castle or town was a rotting pig as it was the right shape to fire and 'exploded' on landing. One of his other favourite things was to fire back a messenger if they didn't want to parly - they knew he'd landed when he stopped screaming!

[Peter Pedant]

zkea has got it mainly

plague was th thing they fired over the walls, during the black death

poisoning wells by throwing carcasses down was done in Roman times

Spartans utilised the plague that befell athens in the pelopennesian war - they called it purpura.


Oh and dont forget to track down what Unit 731 was doing in Harbin in Manchuria - it is absolutely stomach churning.