Ingenious ancient engineers construct some of the most innovative siege weapons in history. Today we'll be taking a look at the most amazing ancient siege weapons!
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Archimedes was the greatest mathematician and engineer of the ancient world. It's the combination of the two that truly set him apart. He was SO CLOSE to inventing calculus as well, but he was killed by a Roman foot soldier during the siege of Syracuse even though they had been ordered not to harm him..
This soldier surely got crucified for killing ancient Einstein
@@midosch7639 The soldier followed orders. They had been instructed to ask, "What is your name?" in Greek (though most common legionaries did not know Greek). The soldier asked the question to Archimedes. Archimedes (busy with his work) said, "Don't disturb me." in Greek. The soldier thought his name was "Dontdisturbme" and killed him.
@@sameerthakur720 oh damn such a bad luck :(
Pos we would have better mathematical instruments by now.. Smh😠
False
Hey! It's the simple history dude! Lol
How many channels do this guy have... Hahahahahaha
Yeah I was wondering why his voice was so farmiliar
How many channels does this guy need
Cool i the voice is familiar
I think so
Archimedes' death ray wasn't a simple mirror. Even concave mirrors would lack the focus and range to track and lit up ships at a distance. He most likely used focus lenses, much like a telescope, on movable gears. Seeing the Mythbusters attempting to replicate that with a hundreds kids holding mirrors was quite funny though.
They did not have technology to create a lens that big - concave metal mirrors are the most likely.
Archimedes did not invent a death ray. it's a total myth
i wouldnt bother watching mythbusters. those fools won't know anything and neither till we until we go back in time and see every little meticulous detail. these documentaries are good enough
I've read that it was hundreds of mirrors held and aimed at one point. Multiplying the suns reflection.
Even then theres no way to make a ship burn with that. It needs a still point, not a ship that goes up and down and back and forth. If you ever used a lens to make a fire you would know that it doesnt burn instantly, it needs to be exactly right on focus and then it still takes a bit. Even if that works once like a miracle, it would never work multiple times. If they ever had this device as the legend has it, it would probably be more blinding than doing any damage.
The last siege tower used in combat was by the US Army in WW2 to re-capture Fort Drum from the Japanese in Manila Bay.
everything becomes illegal right after the USA gets away with doing it. 60 million indigenous taught Hitler how to kill 6.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Archimedes was that one guy who invented weird things that were surprisingly effective.
urbam myth! the claw of my azz
What is weird about anything being effective ?? Maybe your thoughts are 😐🤐.
@@jimmyohara2601 OH I'm sorry I didn't create a hammer that lifted ships out of the fucking ocean and drop them back down.
Thank you very much for this information. I had heard of most of these things, but it's very good to have them all together in one quick video like this. Thank you very much. Well done sir. God bless you.
Limestone is a popular building material. Vinegar can dissolve limestone, the Beotian Flame thrower opened up cracks to allow it inside the wall.
Wait a minute, i think i know this voice, IT'S THE SIMPLEHISTORY DUDE..!!! 😲😲
Yeah
Yeah
Thought so.
I didn't know a kaiju watches youtube
@@elijahjamescomia6331 nah nah nah nah, titan, not kaiju
This video was very interesting there needs to be more of these
Wow, that was a really good video, I really needed this video because I need to do some essay about these siege artilleries. Thank you Top fives!
😊😉
I hope everyone reading this is in good spirits and know that someone loves you .
False otherwise I wouldn't be hungry
Ancient technology is awesome very amazing ancient tech and weapons.
The first one you mentioned was the modern day flamethrower and they love the trebuchet I love
Love the show!!
The hand powered trebuchets most certainly evolved from staff slings. Despite the general depiction, I fully believe that the sling David used against Goliath, and indeed all shepherds used in their vocation, were simple thong slings fitted onto the ends of their shepherd staves as opposed to a hand sling. Indeed, the Greeks consistently used staff slings (or "one man trebuchets" to help you visualize it) as part of their missile barrages during engagements. Hand slings, although indeed formidable, are far outpowered by staff slings, and it would take nothing for a shepherd to use that instead. It's incredible how much a simple misunderstanding of what was common for a time can shape a tale thousands of years old into something other than it was.
Great vid..thanks!
Having studied ancient warfare, I’m never surprised at the weapons men create to kill each othet
I learned all these technologies from the game AOE II 😅
Simple History man!
All hail Caesar!!
As early as 17th) but as a Greek I m happy hearing almost entirely about Greek warfare😂
eastern roman.. no such thing as byzantine empire
Really big fan of simple history and awesome voice 😊😄.
When I was a kid I thought that the battering ram mentioned in the books used to be a live or dead ram - goat thrown at the gates of fortresses.
Da mmm
Same here, lol. I used to imagine a goat running full speed into a wooden city gate... It's all in the name, right?
then you saw Braveheart and realized the truth. Hey, I used to think Molotov cocktails were called Mazeltov cocktails until a Jewish friend corrected me.
Catapults are torsion engines and not counterweight though. So trebuchets aren't really catapults. They use the stored springy energy of coils of hair to launch projectiles.
Very good, concise and informative. Your calm voice also helps delivering the message. I already subscribed. Btw what's the music on background?
The big and small trebuchet were on wheels or on rails--it increased the range by about a third, and stopped the machine wrecking itself. ,
War..a guy thing.
@@renahernandez5120 Nope--just applied physics. Action and reaction are equal and opposite--
@@renahernandez5120 Have you not heard of Queen Hatshepsut?
at 16:18 this is Atkins hall in Cork Ireland, it used to be a sanaturium, now it is a rather nice appartment complex, I used to live there :)
3:06 Is about ballista *continues to show Scorpio firing*
I mean they are in the ballista category so that counts I guess And crossbows are also mini ballista.
I've never even hear of the Claw of Archimedes, the Exploding Mill Wheel, and Archimedes' Death Ray, until now. That prehistoric Flame Thrower was cool to discover and learn. Scary how they used the Plague as a weapon. I hope people won't find a way to turn Covid-19 into a weapon. Greek Fire truly is a mystery, it makes me want to discover if it was truly made in Greece or why they called it Greek Fire. But hearing how dangerous it was, perhaps it's better that it remains undiscovered and a secret, for the safety everyone. The same goes for all the other ancient siege weapons.
Turn Covid into a weapon. Many communist countries have had bio-warfare programs. The Chinese had their premier Virus research facility at Wuhan. They have been researching Coronaviruses at least since 2005. Put two and two together.
@@sameerthakur720 At least we now trying to fight back and have a staging ground against Covid, imagine Resident Evil game turn true and we have deadly undead instead of this
COVID already is a weapon
Napalm was the closest modern man has come to equal Greek fire
@@tweakfreq1982 And Napalm is far superior to Greek fire.
Wow the death Ray !
The sea claw device seems like it is a myth rather than a reality. It could only reach a little past the walls and there would be little reason for a galley to be cruising just over the submerged rocks right next to the walls. The ship cranes just did not have sufficient range to be an issue. Yeah, supposed those rising boarding ramps were in use but it shouldn't take long to figure out where to avoid the cranes.
👍😀 great video
KEEP IN MIND: there were no tutorial videos online for these
0:47 The fact that people nowadays still don't know exactly how the Greek Fire was made goes to show how excellent their military was at keeping top secrets.
Top Five:15 genius ancient saige weapons
hoisted by your own Petard refers to sailors being hanged by use of the rope that held up their trousers which was called a petard.
This is entirely wrong.
@@robotniqueee It is what I had heard and fits the facts. SO what is your explanation.
They recreated that Death Ray where hundreds of children carrying a mirror as large as them and then pointing refracted lights from the mirror in the same direction
Fun fact here in Serbia we call petarde firecrackers
Archimedes: because being nerd always had it's advantages. Since ever knowledge has always meant power.
Interesting, greek fire was obviously the inspiration for the "Wildfire" in Game of Thrones.
Using an image of a hoplite phalanx from 500 BC when talking about Byzantine, Greek, fire....classic.
as a city defender, TY for circumvalation!!
This sounds like simple history's voice.... WAIT IT IS!
I love history
Archimedes invents death ray. Sun: Bye!
Siege towers were not used to put soldiers onto the walls (with some very rare exceptions). Ditches, uneven ground and other defenses would make it impossible to drag such huge structures close enough to the walls. They were simply platforms for archers enabling them to shoot down at the defenders.
Right? a Rope! and Tug? and Down she Goes! Had to stay out of that Range! maybe a ramp if the opertunity was there, but these dudes Lived and Died with their Smarts!
You're wrong man... There are several ancient documents and images confirming... The siege tower or mobile tower is a war machine used to reach the defensive walls of a city or fortress during a siege. The siege towers were made of wood, pulled by oxen and with some walls covered with skins to protect themselves from enemy missiles. Inside there were several floors connected to each other with stairs. At the top there was a "drawbridge" which allowed access to the walls.[1] They had a square base and to ensure they were sufficiently stable, not only did they narrow in height, but the area of the upper platform was equal to 1/5 of the base. They could reach considerable heights, as happened during the campaigns of Alexander the Great where one of these reached the measurement of 120 cubits equal to 53 meters. In Roman times we know that in Masada in 74, one of 60 cubits was built, equal to about 26 meters, also equipped with catapults, ballistae and a large ram. Greetings.
Archimedes gotta be time traveler
17:39 - fun fact, this picture is actually medieval Bohemian book of prayers or rather some kind of instructions for women on how to make atonements. I can read entire parts with only fragment of difficulty. The POV is female. (Yes, in Czech we can tell difference from text, as there are small differences mostly in last one to three letters in a word.) It reads: "...from which is... ...my conscience. ...heart, God! I the fierce one and ...I did again today against ...you I sinned, and in a way ...in front of you, which you ...brought to my path, and a bit..." "you, I wrongly... ever, Oh my God, that I did you, the good ness vast and eternal, enraged. I plead, merciful father, for the love of son of yours, for the blood innocent and for the bitter death oh his, forgive me mercifu lly, whatever I did today, or whenever I have wronged You, Amen."
What a cool and interesting video on an interesting topic, thx.
Caltrops, the simplest and most dangerous of all of them. That's because of the barbs. Hard to get loose without losing your feet. Especially in those times. Patards are still being used in IED's today. Btw, for those 'claws' you need huge counterweights to lift a ship out of the water, a very strong grip and beam, and be able to rotate. I've to see it before I believe it. Same goes for the "death ray". Back then, they didn't have mirrors. Anyway, interesting video. Thanks!
"Back then, they didn't have mirrors." Yes they did. First known mirror was from 6k BC or something. "Btw, for those 'claws'" My guess is that they exploited leverage far more than the vast majority of modern guesswork shows. I can come up with several options that should work at the very least. And if they placed them in optimal positions, they wouldn't need that many for them to be as effective as written, especially as they probably also surprised the enemy.
So in 420 dudes were blazing in war
This is simple history’s voice
Caltrops were used by greeks against charging persian elephants
Awesome
I remember siege towers from watching the mysterious cities of gold.
The narrator sounds like Charlie Sheen and I cant unhear it
Ancient war is very cool
The battering ram really wasn't so genius. Testaments to siege warfare suggest that the battering ram was tried oftentimes just in case the enemy had forgotten to get a strong door for their fortress. And contrary to popular belief, siege towers were not often used to reach castle walls. They were instead used as an elevated firing platform for archers, and had the stunning speed of 1.25 meters per hour. I argue that the most important siege weapon was the shovel. Sieges did not demand the skill of knights, they demanded the skill of engineers. Things like trebuchets and circumvallations could not be made without the skill of siege engineers in one's attacking force, and it could take months to build a single trebuchet.
People up until the 20th century: there's just no way we can comprehend the complicated engineering of the ballista. We aren't caught up. The ballista: BIG SLINGSHOT
Archimedes is a real madlad.
DAVID : HOLD MY BEER.
Archimedes Death Ray has many factors that make it unlikely to be true. Firstly it was never used again, even though many people were needed to pull off this strategy so therefore new how to use or make it, also the equipment to do it was not destroyed. Historians, scientists engineers have all tried to re-create the Death Ray using technology available at the time, but at best all they can achieve is giving a sailor a nice suntan!!
Nope they actually have recreated it
@@wankawanka3053 Mythbusters proved it was impossible. Can you link where they did prove it?
Anyone know the name of the site around 12:06 , first shot of "circumvallation"?
They set water on fire!
Love it
Ballista is a giant slingshot
Correction: The Counterweight Trebuchet was also invented in China in the 4th century BC
So many wars and battles we know so little of .
Nooooo i still think of the battle ram as the castle seige weapon not the hand held
Nah, English longbow is the best old world weapon in my opinion. People still use them for hunting even today, and it's English, it's badass, mate.
thats not even ancient era weapons longbow is from medieval era.
The English longbow was effective only in that it was inexpensive and "easy" to make and when unstrung, doubled as a staff. It had less range and power that the recurve bow - and was too large to be used on horseback. As a "projectile weapon" is was very much inferior to the recurve bow. It is also a lesser weapon to the flatbow (Nth America) which is similar part from the "ends" (which do not taper - therefore adding just that little more tension). The main advantage of these masses ranks of longbow archers was not only in the bow - it was essentially in the men themselves - they were also armed with long knives and were more than effective as light infantry - especially effective against heavily armoured "knights" who'd been de-horsed (this was the real decider at Agincourt).
I wonder how strong a spring loaded battering ram would have been.
Would have needed a really large spring and maybe some gears. Maybe a leaf spring design might be simpler. This is definitely an interesting idea
Hey this voice is familiar from simple history i subscribe on that channel
In other words:!!! Greeks invented first the majority of these things… I wonder really.. If these people were United and not fighting each other, what would have been… I believe that by far Greeks are the most smart, and they offered the biggest in human history in every aspect if life..Not only in war, but in piece, in mind, in sciences, in everything..everything we value today comes from them.. Huge respect.. We owe them everything…
Read "The Red Queen's Race" a Sicence Fiction short story from Isaac Asimov.
And as all things end, we can thank the romans
Idea for a new channel: Top History. Its just this channel but with the style of simple history
The greek fire was the first flamethrower cuz it shoots fire like a flamethrower
I love how it's "Top 5s" but they always do 15
Myth busters tried recreating number 1 but came to the conclusion it wasn’t possible with modern engineering
finally someone that mentioned it! yeap proved even with modern tech its useless
Several of these are not ancient, not siege weapons, or even neither -starting with the first one, greek fire- but the video is interesting nonetheless.
Also the Romans managed to take Syracuse
Liquid fire
How was that ancient sailing ship in the beginning moving with its sails closed?
Coooool
15 genius ancient siege weapons.. Number 6, it failed the only 3 times we have on record, but we think it worked afterwards, even though we have no concrete examples..
Capt: Private it's your turn to ride the bellows. Me:😞
The manganel is actually called an onager
There are many techniques used in Indian sub continent not mentioned here
Make your own channel and coment it.
This is the 2nd video I've seen from this channel and both are top 15 videos on a channel called top fives. What am I missing here?
And in modern times, when Archimedes “ray”’was “recreated”…….it just didn’t work no matter how much they tried. 🤔🇨🇺🇺🇸
2:25 look closely to the longbowman on the right with the flaming arrow. [when you get friendzoned by your crush]
I love to play strong hold crusader 😎😍
great game!
#5, if you can’t beat a wall, build a wall.
Ida like to seen what they used to raise the pole that held the cable that held the hook that snagged the ship and lifed it up. It sure wasnt what was shown in the pic.
A hypothesis I have seen, which seems more reasonable, is that the ship smasher(s) were simple spears embedded in the seafloor which could be raised by cables - pointing upward toward the approaching ships. The hulls would run onto the points and the ships' own momentum would pivot the spear up and through the hull - breaking the keel and momentarily raising the ship(s) above the surface. The advantage is that it requires no sophisticated levers and is largely concealed until the vessels hit them. An unwieldy, giant claw being manipulated from the walls would be readily evaded by the oar driven bi/triremes.
You forgot da Vinci's humanoid prophalytic soldier robots also seen in Robocop 2014 movie remake
4:22 nice
So many issues with this post. The timeframe described is far from "Ancient" (which is a specific historical term used to refer to a time period which, at least in western history, took place prior to the Classical era, or at most, includes the Classical era and ends with the start of the middle ages) - Explosives and Trebuchets are from the Renaissance and later. Circumvallation is not a "weapon", but a strategy of conducting a seige. Claiming it is a "weapon" would be like claiming encirclement or a feint is a "weapon". Finally, both Aristotle's Claw and Archimede's Mirror are almost certainly fake. They have been investigated multiple times, and never shown to have worked. Of the 15 "ancient seige weapons", over 1/3 don't actually fit the category, and they couldn't even bother to make all 15 at least be weapons.
The Romans actually did capture Syracuse, and Archimedes was killed.
Drawing circles in the sand, complaining about the soldier that came to stab him to death, were stepping on the formula.
I was searching for u through the comments
@@elvenkind6072 the soldiers had orders not to harm him, but Archimedes said he had to finish his work before he goes but roman foot soldier got mad and killed him
Hi Simple History
Only one death ray existed.
They created the first armored smasher
This is kinda like my dream 😁
Ancient people were exactly as smart as we are today. They just didn't have as easy access to KNOWLEDGE and TOOLS and MATERIALS as we do today. And you forgot the Hwa'cha. The MRLS of the past.