The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7292 p394
27 March 2004

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Ancient weapons of mass destruction more
Evidence for human survival in the Arctic tundra 30,000 years ago more
Profit prolongs use of persistent pollutants more
Strange exceptions more

Ancient weapons of mass destruction

Some reflections upon the nature and history of the catapult are expressed in an essay by Serafina Cuomo of Imperial College, London, in Science for 6 February. Among other details she reveals that the construction of catapults is given the name “belopoietics”, from belos, a Greek term for a projectile or a device for launching it.

There is some doubt about the antiquity of the catapult. Diodorus Siculus in the fourth century BC claims that it was invented about 399BC by craftsmen employed by the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius to devise new weapons of warfare. However, it was also depicted in a ninth century BC relief from Nimrud in Iraq, thus adding a historical twist to the stories of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

It is presumed that the idea for the catapult derived from the humble bow, which could project an arrow but nothing else. The catapult served to launch heavy masses of rock or flaming combustibles into citadels.

It was even used to hurl plague-infected corpses — an early form of bacteriological warfare. Since a catapult could be constructed capable of projecting massive rocks, given the materials and manpower, it provided a ready means of breaking down defence structures as well as slaying soldiers and civilians. The ability to project a large mass of flaming fabric soaked in flammable liquid added a new terror to warfare.

The heavy catapult strongly contrasts with the humble elastic catapult once known to every schoolboy, which was probably derived from the ancient sling, which also cast stones.

The sorry story of the development of such a weapon adds emphasis to the complaint that humans have an ugly urge to produce what have since become notorious as “weapons of mass destruction”. It is strange that this capability should emerge from our long-distant past.

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Evidence for human survival in the Arctic tundra 30,000 years ago

The Arctic region of Siberia is not a promising site in which to lead a simple life, and indeed, no primate is constructed to withstand the rigours of the winter there without a mass of equipment calculated to promote bare survival. Yet it appears that at the height of the last Ice Age humans were surviving in northern Siberia in the valley of the Yana River 500km north of the Arctic Circle.

A paper by a group of Russian archaeologists published in the 2 January issue of Science has described a collection of human artefacts dating back some 30,000 years. Why the makers of these things ventured into so dismal a region and how long they managed to survive there can only be a matter of guesswork.

Some of the finds from Yana closely resemble articles left by the Clovis people who are presumed to be the first settlers in North America, 13,600 years ago. They include two bevelled spear shafts manufactured from mammoth ivory and a spectacular shaft derived from the horn of a woolly rhinoceros. These support the idea of a connection between Alaska and Siberia when tribal migrations occurred. But the Yana find includes other tools such as chipped slate and chert scrapers and awls that have no resemblance to Clovis artefacts.

The Yana site is only the second known which indicates human penetration of the Arctic before the southward movement of the glaciers, and was discovered in 1993 and investigate during the summers of 2001 and 2002. The total yield was 376 flaked pebbles and three spear shafts. By contrast, the first traces of humans in Alaska across the Bering Straits are roughly 14,000 years old. Arguments over how long ago human communities arrived in the Americas have been stimulated by the find.

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Profit prolongs use of persistent pollutants

There is a note in Nature for 26 February concerning the problem that is being increasingly revealed in respect of long persistent pollutants in our fragile world. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, first drawn up in 2001, provided for the banning of many familiar pollutants in the near future. The list includes 12 types of compound that have limited economic importance, but the constraints on others are being opposed by manufacturers who benefit from their commercial value.

Although 50 countries have ratified the convention so far, the US and the UK have failed to follow suit. Environmentalists have long argued that persistent organic pollutants, including dioxins and chlordane, accumulate in plants and animals and, by passing into the food chain, threaten human health.

Brominated flame retardants, in particular, including hexabromocyclodecane and decabromophenyl ether, are used in quantities of tens of thousands of tonnes annually in textiles, electrical equipment and building materials.

These additives are prone to enter the environment during both their manufacture and their ultimate disposal. Unfortunately, they are stable and take a long time to become detoxified.

Flame retardants are due for risk assessment towards the end of this summer, but manufacturers of bromine and its derivatives have maintained that hexabromocyclodecane and decabromophenyl ether pose no substantial risk. Meanwhile, many experts suspect that the hazards are greater than the manufacturers are prepared to admit.

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And I quote ...

Strange exceptions
“All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the euphorics which grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots — all without exception have been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial. And to these natural modifiers of consciousness modern science has added its quota of synthetics — chloral, for example, and Benzedrine, the bromides and the barbiturates. Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor’s orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco.”
— Aldous Huxley: ‘The doors of perception’ (1954).

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