Biological weapons may seem like relatively modern entrants into the bloody history of human conflict, and why not? The term itself wasn’t coined until the 20th century, entering the lexicon during the horrors of World War I. Its shorter synonym, bioweapon, didn’t even appear in dictionaries until the 1960s.
Today, the United Nations describes biological weapons as devices or methods that “disseminate disease-causing organisms or toxins to harm or kill humans, animals or plants,” as chillingly succinct a definition as anyone would care to have.
But the concept of biological warfare is indisputably ancient — and as weapons of mass destruction, bioweapons of centuries past were just as terrifying to soldiers and civilians then as their modern equivalents are to us today.
Ancient Bioweapons
A surprisingly wide variety of bioweapons were available in the ancient world. After all, arrows and spears technically became bioweapons the moment their tips were dipped into poison, excrement or even simple, microbe-rich dirt. Infected and putrefying corpses, whether animal or human, were readymade bioweapons when dumped into an enemy’s water supply or launched over a city wall, bringing dismay as well as disease.
