A weapon is a tool employed to gain a tactical advantage over an adversary, usually by injury, defeat, or destruction, or the threat of these.
Weapons may be used to attack or threaten - but also to defend and protect. There are a huge variety of weapons, which all have different means of coercion. They can be as simple as a club, or as complex as an intercontinental ballistic missile—and metaphorically anything capable of being used to damage, even psychologically, can be referred to as a weapon.
History
Tools of various sorts were undoubtedly used very early in human history, and weapons are just a particular type of tool - making up for comparative lack of natural weapons such as claws, horns and teeth.
Very simple weapon use has been seen in some communities of chimpanzees[3]. Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, has suggested that the discovery of spear use by chimpanzees probably means that early humans used wooden spears as well, perhaps five million years ago.
The first human use of weapons is not easy to date, as these would probably have been wooden clubs, spears and unshaped stones thrown at prey or enemy—and none of these would leave an unambiguous record.
The earliest examples found are a cache of eight wooden throwing spears, the Schöninger Speere, which have been dated as 400,000 years ago.
By 250,000 years ago wooden spears were made with fire-hardened points. From 80,000 years ago humans began to make complex stone blades, which were used as spear points.
Bows and arrows may have been used by 60,000 years ago
Light, horse-drawn chariots for use in battle appeared with the invention of the spoked wheel. The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC and their usage peaked around 1300 BC (see Battle of Kadesh). Chariots ceased to have military importance in the 4th century BC, as horses were bred to support the weight of a man, and chariotry (the part of a military force that fought from chariots) gave way to cavalry.
The Medieval period, including the Western Middle Ages, was characterized by two iconic weapons: knights, heavily-armored horsemen, and castles, fortified dwellings which proliferated throughout Europe and the near east. While knights harked back to earlier historical cavalry such as the Roman and Persian cataphracts, castles triggered quite revolutionary advances, including increasingly sophisticated siegecraft.
The Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation firearms in warfare, with the introduction of guns and rockets to the battlefield.
From the American Revolution through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were finally excluded from the battlefield for the most part. Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles", this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun.
World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare, and weapons were developed quickly to meet wartime needs. Many new technologies were developed, particularly in the development of military aircraft and vehicles. World War II however, perhaps marked the most frantic period of weapons development in the history of humanity. Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. Ultimately, the most powerful of all invented weapons was the Hydrogen bomb.
After World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, the constant technological development of new weapons was institutionalized, as participants engaged in a constant race to develop weapons and counter-weapons. This constant state of weapons development continues into the modern era, and remains a constant draw on the resources of most nations.
Firearms
Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they store energy in a combustible propellant such as gunpowder, rather than in a weight or spring. This energy is released quite rapidly, and can be restored without much effort by the user, so that even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. They became increasingly important and effective during the 16th century to 19th century, with progressive improvements in ignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunition handling and propellant. During the U.S. Civil War various technologies including the machine gun and ironclad warship emerged that would be recognizable and useful military weapons today, particularly in lower-technology conflicts. In the 19th century warship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuel-powered steam engines.
The age of edged weapons ended abruptly just before World War I with rifled artillery, such as howitzers which were able to destroy any masonry fortress, as well as destroy other fortifications. This single invention caused a revolution in military affairs and doctrines that continues to this day. See Technology during World War I for a detailed discussion.
An important feature of industrial age warfare was technological escalation - an innovation could, and would, be rapidly matched by copying it, and often with yet another innovation to counter it. The technological escalation during World War I was profound, producing armed aircraft and tanks.
This continued in the period between the end of that war and the next, with continuous improvements of all weapons by all major powers. Many modern military weapons, particularly ground-based ones, are relatively minor improvements on those of World War II. See military technology during World War II for a detailed discussion.
Nuclear weapons
The most notable development in weaponry since World War II has been the combination and further development of two weapons first used in it—nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile, leading to its ultimate configuration: the ICBM. The mutual possession of these by the United States and the Soviet Union ensured that either nation could inflict terrible damage on the other; so terrible, in fact, that neither nation was willing to instigate direct, all-out war with the other (a phenomenon known as Mutually Assured Destruction). The indiscriminate nature of the destruction has made nuclear-tipped missiles essentially useless for the smaller wars fought since. However computer-guided weaponry of all kinds, from precision-guided munitions (or "smart bombs") to computer-aimed tank rounds, has greatly increased weaponry's accuracy.
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