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Gladiator Dagger and Greaves
Gladiator's dagger and pair of bronze greaves (leg guards) from Pompeii, decorated with reliefs of Jupiter (left) and Neptune (right), 1st century BCE.
Archaeological Museum, Naples.
Questions & Answers
What are the oldest weapons in the world?
- The oldest weapons in the world are spears, specifically the spears found in Schöningen, Germany in 1995 dated to c. 400,000 BCE
What were weapons originally made of?
- Weapons were originally made of wood and stone.
What is the oldest gun in the world?
- The oldest firearm found to date is the Heilongjiang Hand Cannon from China, dated to c. 1288.
What are the oldest swords in the world?
- The oldest swords in the world were discovered only in the 1980s at Arslantepe Mound in Turkey and date to c. 3300 BCE.
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License & Copyright
This image was first published on Flickr.
Original image by Carole Raddato. Uploaded by Carole Raddato, published on 19 March 2014. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon a work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
