Throwing Fire
Projectile Technology through History

This is a history of hard, accurate throwing and the manipulation of fire as unique human capabilities.

Alfred W. Crosby (Author)

9780521156318, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 August 2010

218 pages
21.7 x 14 x 1.4 cm, 0.26 kg

'… provocative and highly illuminating.' Ambix

Historian Alfred W. Crosby looks at hard, accurate throwing and the manipulation of fire as unique human capabilities. Humans began throwing rocks in prehistory and then progressed to javelins, atlatls, bows and arrows. We learned to make fire by friction and used it to cook, drive game, burn out rivals, and alter landscapes. In historic times we invented catapults, trebuchets, and such flammable liquids as Greek Fire. About 1,000 years ago we invented gunpowder, which accelerated the rise of empires and the advance of European imperialism. In the 20th century, gunpowder weaponry enabled us to wage the most destructive wars of all time, peaking at the end of World War II with the V-2 and atomic bomb. Today, we have turned our projectile talents to space travel which may make it possible for our species to migrate to other bodies of our solar system and even other star systems.

Part I. Who, Why, and How: 1. The Pliocene: something new is afoot
Part II. The First Acceleration, The First Projectiles: 2. The Pliocene and Pleistocene: 'you are what you throw'
3. The Pleistocene and Holocene: 'cooking the Earth'
4. The Upper Paleolithic: 'humanity and other disasters'
5. From weapon craftsmanship to weapon technology
Part III. The Second Acceleration: Gunpowder: 6. The Chinese elixir
7. Gunpowder as centripetal force
8. Brown Bess to Big Bertha
Part IV. The Third Acceleration: Into Extraterrestrial and Subatomic Space: 9. The V-2 and the bomb
10. The longest throws
Part V. The Fourth Acceleration.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], General & world history [HBG]