There is a very prosaic reason for this. We distance ourselves from killing so that we do not incur the risk of being killed ourselves. Some may call this cowardly, yet it is no secret that societies and states have sought to save blood and treasure by protecting their fittest, fastest, most highly trained and brightest young fighters.<\/p>\n
If you can kill from a distance, with superior weapons, it negates the need to risk the sacrifice of life. This has been key to survival throughout history. Still, is this the only reason we seek weapons that distance us from the practice of killing? Or is there something less instinctive and more cognitively driven that explains why we choose to develop and then hide behind ever more advanced weapons?<\/p>\n
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Nataruk: one of the earliest massacres in history<\/h3>\n
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Let\u2019s step back 10,000 years or so, to a time around the end of the last ice age. By the fertile and frequented shores of a lagoon in Kenya, 21 miles west of Lake Turkana, early peoples fished, drank fresh water and, as indicated by fragments of pottery from the area, foraged and stored food. This was a seemingly serene place, but don\u2019t be fooled: according to researchers from the University of Cambridge, this was also the site of the world\u2019s earliest recorded mass killings<\/a>. Down by the banks of the lagoon, 27 foragers were brutally murdered by a rival group in an attack dubbed the \u2018Nataruk Massacre\u2019. The history of this incident tells us a lot about the early human experience with weaponry.<\/p>\n
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The Cambridge archaeologists found the remains of pregnant women with their hands bound behind their backs, and of children whose bodies were peppered with arrowheads made from jet-black obsidian. They also found evidence of sharp-force trauma caused by spear-like weapons, and male skulls that had been smashed by blunt force, possibly using clubs or rocks.<\/p>\n
This was the earliest documented evidence of humanity\u2019s dark side in brutal action. A whole clan of people \u2013 a small society, with myths and customs now lost \u2013 was annihilated by a \u2018superior\u2019 group, certainly one with superior weapons. But why?<\/p>\n
It appears that the indiscriminate killing of rivals was an important survival strategy during this period, pitting one clan against the other. Perhaps there was rivalry over land, food or culture. This does not sound unfamiliar to modern ears: wars have been fought over less. And early weapons \u2013 spears, arrows and clubs \u2013 allowed our human ancestors to commit these \u2018crimes against humanity\u2019. Those who had the more advanced weapons, and the preponderance of force, were able to kill off rivals and survive. This lesson was not lost throughout human \u2018progression\u2019.<\/p>\n
War in the medieval era<\/h3>\n
Now let\u2019s jump forward to medieval Europe. Picture noble, chivalrous knights high on horseback, decked in chain mail and brandishing swords. Charging valiantly into chaotic, bloody battles, safe from the brutal melee below they thrust down and impale enemy footsoldiers. The training of knights began young. A teenage squire would accompany a knight into battle as a flag bearer or to hold a shield. As the boy got older and was strong enough to hold a heavy, full-length metal sword, he would be given the chance to prove his worth in battle. If he survived, he would be made a knight in his own right.<\/p>\n
The crossbow was a great leveller: cheap, easy to use, powerful, accurate <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
During the era of the crusades<\/a>, though, a new threat to this noble (often wealthy, and usually Christian) system emerged. The crossbow had been around in China since at least the fifth-century, when Sun Tzu\u2019s The Art of War<\/em> touched upon the energy bound up in bow and trigger. But in the 12th century the crossbow began to cause concern in Europe. It was likely brought to Britain during the Norman conques<\/a>t, quickly spreading across Europe to become the weapon of choice for continental armies.<\/p>\n
The crossbow was a great leveller: it was cheap, easy to produce, even easier to use and, most importantly, deadly powerful and accurate. This meant that any society, even those outside Europe and deemed uncivilised, could build large armies of crossbow-wielding \u2018heathens\u2019 and \u2013 for the first time, it seemed \u2013 challenge the dominance of highly trained, wealthy (and expensive to replace) elite knights in shining armour. This brought fear to those in power. Such a weapon could not be left unregulated.<\/p>\n
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As historian Ralph Payne-Gallwey explained, the crossbow was \u201cconsidered so barbarous\u201d that it was banned by Pope Urban II in 1096 and again by Pope Innocent II during the Catholic Church\u2019s second Lateran Council in 1139. The punishment for using such a weapon \u201chateful to God and unfit for Christians\u201d was anathema \u2013 excommunication by the pope. There is a key, telling caveat here, however: it was acceptable, and even encouraged, for Europeans to deploy the crossbow against those who weren\u2019t European elites (and usually not Christian).<\/p>\n
The crossbow would be the ideal weapon for the \u2018civilised\u2019 to kill the \u2018uncivilised\u2019 at distance. Richard the Lionheart<\/a> was, for instance, an expert with the weapon, and would take potshots at the \u2018ungodly\u2019 for sport. In 1189\u201391, during the siege of Acre (on the northern Mediterranean coast of what\u2019s now Israel) and while suffering from a fever, the king would \u201cenjoy the pleasure of shooting bolts\u201d at Turks and infidels to cheer him up. His action were sanctioned by the pope and by God because of the race and religion of his targets.<\/p>\n
Perhaps, then, Europeans were not so civilised or chivalrous. Indeed, as European nations grew stronger from the 15th century and established themselves at the centre of the self-proclaimed civilised world, it became common for distancing weapons to be used unsparingly against \u2018others\u2019, even if those \u2018others\u2019 refused to take part in this sanitised, detached form of war. The rise of the modern gun is one example of this.<\/p>\n
By the 16th century, more-powerful guns replaced the bow as the most effective distance weapons <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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When describing guns in the late 16th century, a French solider remarked that they were deployed by those \u201cwho would not dare look in the face of those whom they lay low with their wretched bullets\u201d. If we explore the history of firearms \u2013 from early handguns to cannons and machine guns \u2013 it\u2019s clear that these weapons allowed humans to kill with ever-greater ease and without human-to-human contact. Perhaps this is part of the allure.<\/p>\n
Gunpowder and \u2018fire lances\u2019 (spears with pyrotechnics attached) have caused fear in battle since their first use in China in the 10th century, allowing armies to terrorise their enemies from distance. These warriors would even tie fireworks and spears to animals \u2013 usually oxen \u2013 sending them in a panicked flurry towards the enemy in an attempt to strike fear. In the 13th century, trade with Asia along the Silk Roads<\/a> brought gunpowder into European and Ottoman ranks. Though early weapons using gunpowder were inefficient, dangerous and cumbersome, by the 16th century more-powerful guns were being produced, and they replaced the bow as the most effective distance weapon.<\/p>\n
The coming of the gun<\/h3>\n
Not everyone took kindly to such \u2018advances\u2019, however. Societies in Persia and across Islamic north Africa did not welcome the modern guns that came flooding in from the European continent. An example was the Mamluk sultanate, ruling from Cairo from the 13th century. This ancient Islamic society considered guns to be out of step with traditional ideas of a warrior\u2019s honour.<\/p>\n
Furusiyya was the Mamluk equivalent of the chivalry and, as historian Shihab Al-Sarraf has written, it put an onus on nobility and skilled training for \u201cclose combat\u201d and \u201cthe art of war itself\u201d. Killing, if necessary, was to be done face to face and as a last resort. That\u2019s not to say that they didn\u2019t own both guns and cannons, but the Mamluks refrained from using them in battle. According to historian Alexander DeConde, the Mamluks believed the gun to be unfit for use because of the \u201cunchivalrous and immoral character of the weapon\u201d.<\/p>\n
There are those who dispute this \u2013 who claim that the Mamluks were unprepared and untrained for modern war \u2013 but the fact is that in 1517 the Mamluks placed guns and cannons on the battlefield against an invading Ottoman force, yet still did not use them against their foes. There is a lesson here, one that we have seen before.<\/p>\n
In time, the inability or moral refusal of the Mamluks to harness superior weapons ultimately led to their downfall. The society that did not use the gun would be annihilated, from distance, by stronger Ottoman forces that did. The victors were those who embraced the disturbingly distant and easy method of killing. Indeed, the Mamluks were just one of many states to suffer defeat during the 16th and 17th century, in part because of their rejection of firearms. The Iranian Safavid dynasty was reluctant to use such weapons, and were defeated in battle by the Ottomans in the 16th century \u2013 until they themselves adopted these weapons. And the British and French colonial campaigns in Africa \u2013 such as the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, in which the British used the Gatling gun (a proto machine gun) \u2013 provide reminders of how guns have been used to wipe out foes en masse and at distance. Yet, when it comes to weaponry, what goes around comes around, and it was not long before the world\u2019s victorious empires would be turning these weapons on each other.<\/p>\n
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A mid the trenches of the First World War<\/a>, \u2018no man\u2019s land\u2019 was a space between opposing enemies where all humans feared to tread. Some chose to face execution rather than raise their heads above the parapets. \u2018Cowardice\u2019 was punishable by firing squad. But what made these armies stop in their tracks and dig into the earth for safety? What made soldiers lose their minds, refuse to fight, and flee the field of battle \u2013 even though that act would also mean death for the men involved?<\/p>\n
![\""Soldiers\"]( "\\"\"Maxim\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Soldiers aim a Maxim gun during the First World War. The large-scale carnage wreaked by machine guns in this conflict caused world powers to seek more \u2018civilised\u2019 ways of waging war (Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The answers were perched on the lips of trenches, surrounded by sandbags: machine guns. Fast, accurate, and powerful, these were ideal weapons when facing lesser and weaker armed forces. One of the first, invented around 1884, was the Maxim gun, named for its American-British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim.<\/p>\n
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With a rate of fire surpassing 500 rounds per minute, it was used to annihilate whole armies during the British and German colonial campaigns. Yet when these empires ultimately met each other on the battlefields of Europe, the machine gun would not be their saviour. Instead, it would cause the deaths of millions of their youngest, fittest and brightest. More than 41 million were killed and wounded in the First World War, including more than 300,000 Americans<\/a>. And in the postwar era, other rising world powers \u2013 especially the US \u2013 looked to make war more \u2018civilised\u2019, turning to new weapons of \u2018morality\u2019, \u2018distance\u2019, and \u2018sterile precision\u2019 to help make war safer, winnable, \u2018better\u2019.<\/p>\n
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![\""Soldiers\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2000\/05\/A-short-history-of-long-distance-warfare-2-1680fab.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413"\" "\\"\"Maxim\\"")
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