Traction trebuchet
Trabuquete de tracción humana
- Date
- c. 400-300 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Central Plain, Henan, China
- Credited to
- Mohist school (military texts); engineers of the Warring States period
- Field
- Conflict
What it is
A siege lever in which a team of men pull on ropes to launch projectiles with a sling. It spread through Asia and reached the Mediterranean by around the 6th century.
Described in the military chapters of the Mozi; it reached Byzantium and the Islamic world through the Avars and the Arabs.
What it led to
- siege warfare with lever artillery
- spread through Central Asia and Byzantium