Shattered skeleton is first confirmed death from trebuchet
science.org73 points by hermitcrab 5 days ago
73 points by hermitcrab 5 days ago
"What are you going to do, lob a stone at me from 300m away?" shouted the man on the parapet, moments before impact.
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" - last words of Major General John Sedgwick, American Civil War.
I hate this meme. Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool". And the other person still decides to use lethal force. That is diabolical, not funny.
> Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool".
That strikes me as a wildly incorrect interpretation of the situation in the meme.
My reading is closer to a man on a parapet shouting "neener neener you can't touch me" moments before being touched by a rock at high velocity
Yup, my favorite is the ‘what are you going to do, stab me? -stabbed man’ quote from the news interview hah.
I think it was American Gangster that had the line "what are you going to do, shoot me in front of everyone?", right before he gets shot in front of everyone. That's a good one.
I read an account of exactly that happening to the natives in my country 200 years ago. A group paddled up the river in their canoe and the local tribesmen who were clearly more powerful taunted them. But the natives in the canoe had newly discovered guns and shot the taunters until they were "tired of man-killing" and went home. It seemed to be purely hunting humans for fun. And yes, it was horrible, that was part of a wave of wars that decimates the whole country and cost them their sovereignty.
Trebuchets were used in the Syrian civil war (2011-2024).
I would link a video but I don't think that is a wise idea for legal reasons. There were so many parties in that war and I'm not sure which ones were declared terrorist organizations.
Please don't censor yourself. It should be possible for you to share a video of something without that meaning you support it. You probably live in a country that has free speech? Use it.
I would like to see a video of a trebuchet. Modern or not.
“The breaks indicate a very large area of impact and devastation,” she says. “It’s likely the individual was killed by a siege engine.”
So it’s likely, which means it’s not confirmed as the headline implies.
I don't get the nitpicking here. Scientifically correct, since circumstantial. Meteor is also possible, but very unlikely.
The probability regimes in which science is dealing often only leave marginal room for alternative explanations.
"...uncovered the graves of nine skeletons dated to the early 1300s. Five, including Skeleton 150, dated to the 1300s."
That seems like a contradiction.
I parsed it as ((mass grave containing 9 skeletons) dated to the early 1300s) && ((5 skeletons) dated to the 1300s).
As in, the grave itself was dated, and 5 of the 9 skeletons found inside were also individually dated to roughly the same century. Maybe the other 4 were not tested, or turned out to have been buried at a later date.
But have they identified the trebuchet that killed him?
We can rule out Warwolf [1] my favorite trebuchet, which never killed anyone.
> We can rule out Warwolf
Can we? That Wikipedia page is inconclusive, and thus article says:
During Edward I’s 1304 siege of the castle, English forces deployed the recently invented trebuchet, a weapon first documented in the 12th century. A cousin to the catapult, trebuchets were capable of hurling boulders weighing more than 100 kilograms hundreds of meters. One at Stirling, dubbed “War Wolf,” “was the biggest trebuchet ever built at that point,” Buckberry says. Eyewitness accounts confirm the giant siege engine was used during the 1304 battle, tearing through two stone walls “as an arrow would fly through a piece of cloth.”
Accounts of the battle don’t mention any trebuchet casualties. But Buckberry says Skeleton 150’s injuries strongly suggest at least one defender was hit from behind by a flying boulder, launched by War Wolf or one of the other siege engines arrayed outside Stirling Castle’s walls. “It’s a huge amount of energy delivered in milliseconds,” Waltenberger says. “In skeletons from past times you rarely see this.”
Interesting find! I wonder if the massive damage could also be explained by the falling wall (documented in the article).
Indeed, I am sure there are other mechanisms that could cause similar trauma.
Unlikely, as a regular slow crush gives very different injuries compared to a high velocity impact.
It depends on how tall the damaged structure was. A large chunk of masonry falling from a tower could reach speeds comparable to a car crash.
Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing
> Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing
from the article: “skull broken in 61 places”
Doubt you’d stay conscious long enough to notice
Instant unconsciousness. Hopefully he didn't wake up.
How do you know that? Is it confirmed that this led to instant unconsciousness?
The skull was found in 61 pieces, which is above the limit for quantity of pieces your skull can shatter into from blunt force while remaining alive.
OT but... This reminds me of a classic Esquire Dubious Achievements Awards headline from the 1980s, "Man Drills 22 Holes in Head and Lives".
It went on to tell how a man had committed suicide by drilling 23 holes in his head.
Great Scott, I think we just hit someone!
Our modern weapons are far more destructive, but our propensity for violence and war seems to be an invariant across the millennia.
Well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
From 1935. And he was not the first one to point that out either.
I actually think that thanks to the internet, we expose many more criminal build ups towards warfare nowadays than before.
Eisenhower's farewell speech [1] is also basically prophetic, which is quite unfortunate in that they were all warnings of things to vigilantly avoid.
[1] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
> indicates horrific demise
If I go, I would like to go from massive blunt trauma from behind that renders me instantly unconscious.
Well I call you a WIMP! I want to go by literally shitting blood in an agonising pain an fever for weeks on end, like most people in these campaigns often faced their demise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysentery
Actually, you know what, I think you might have a point there. I take back ky harsh words.
> 14th century
While this death may be the first confirmed from a trebuchet, is that really the first death by a trebuchet? Plus, I'd say catapults are almost identical to a trebuchet in workings, for the most part. I don't quite believe that this was really the first death by catapult.
Catapults store energy using elastic deformation, like a bow; counterweight trebuchets store energy using gravity.
Didn't the Romans have something similar?
The Romans had onagers and ballista, both of which work via string tension. Then around 6AD it seems string traction (mangonels) where introduced from China and finally counterweight/gravity was introduced in the 12th century.
After all these years they finally got someone
i read death BY trebuchet, i am disappointed.
dude got absolutely rocked
first confirmed case of MLG noscope