It’s a paradox that the more humans have evolved and advanced, the better we’ve become at killing one another.
Even in an age where we can inflict impersonal mass destruction with the push of a button, humans are still committed to producing newer and deadlier handheld weapons for hunting, personal protection, and, alas, for waging war.
But when did we first start implementing these deadly tools? What were some of the most important advances in weapon development? Sadly, there are few precise answers. As we’ll see, the invention and perfection of weapons has a decidedly scattered history, with various cultures creating similar death-dealing devices at different times across a broad span of history. Like war itself, tracking the evolution of weapons is a messy and inexact business. Here, then, is our best shot at providing a broad overview of what researchers know about the evolution of humanity’s weapons of war.
