Why did the ancient cold weapon pike replace the spear?

Why did the ancient cold weapon pike replace the spear?

Spear is a pure stabbing soldier, which is extremely simple to make and has great effect in killing the enemy. Therefore, since the Han Dynasty, spear system has been abandoned and declined, but it is still reused today, which is due to its shape.

From this description, we can find that in the iterative process of ancient cold weapons, Ge was gradually eliminated, and Ji gradually became a ceremonial appliance, losing its significance as a weapon. Only spears have been used by people for thousands of years. Compared with Ge Ji's weapons, the spear is simple in design, and it is a purely functional stabbing weapon, which is very consistent with the principle of efficiency first on the battlefield, because any redundant action or fancy decoration may kill you on the spot.

To save resources instead of spears

There is no definite conclusion about who invented the gun, but one thing is certain: the gun appeared much later than the spear. The spear and the gun were used for a long time at the same time, but it didn't take long for the gun to catch up and become one of the mainstream weapons.

The earliest record of the coexistence of guns and spears should be roughly in the Three Kingdoms period. Chen Shou's Biography of the Three Kingdoms Zhang Fei records: Fly across the bridge according to the water, look at the spear and say: I am Zhang Yide, but I can come to die! There is also a record in Shu Wei: A strong man in Kansai learned spear, but he was not selective and could not be an archer.

However, according to the description of later generations, Ma Chao and Zhao Yun, both of whom belonged to the Five Tigers General Army with Zhang Fei, were good at firearms, and Ma Chao was born in the Kansai Army, which caused some confusion. So, did Ma Chao and Zhao Yun use spears or guns? Maybe the ancients didn't know this either. For this reason, modern scholars, such as the Chronicle of Weapons written by Japanese Ishikawa Dingchun, have stated that spears and guns are the same kind of weapons, but the names are different, and the difference in form is after Zhuge Liang invented guns.

Is that spear and gun really the same weapon? What does this have to do with Zhuge Liang? We know that Shu lived in a corner during the Three Kingdoms period, and its population and resources were far from comparable to those of Cao Wei in the north. Therefore, if Zhuge Liang wants to explore the north, he must be careful with his own resources, and he invented Zhuge Liang's crossbow and wooden stream for this purpose.

At the same time, iron ore is also an extremely important strategic resource, but the iron smelting industry was seriously damaged due to the melee between warlords in the Three Kingdoms period. Iron is so scarce that there are cases where coffins are cut to get nails and wooden instruments of torture are used instead of iron instruments of torture.

Although there are iron ore resources such as Dingze (now south of Yanyuan County, Sichuan Province), Taideng (now east of Mianning County) and Beishui (now northeast of Huili County) in Shuhan, it is now Panzhihua Iron Mine. However, due to the backward mining technology, it is still a drop in the bucket for military needs, so how to make more efficient use of iron resources to make weapons is the top priority of Shu, and I believe that Prime Minister Zhuge has been paying attention to it.

Speaking of this, it just leads to the emergence of cold weapon guns. There are many kinds of guns, such as short-edged guns, cone guns, short-cone guns, grab guns and so on. But on the whole, you will find that guns are more concise than spears. Similarly, forging a gun requires far less iron than a spear, but the lethality of the weapon made is not much different. Therefore, the first appearance of guns was probably invented to save strategic resources.

Interestingly, the gun is pictophonetic, next to it is wooden, which refers to wooden machinery, and the warehouse on the right refers to the granary. Together, it is the "wooden machinery to defend the granary", which is the law enforcement equipment of the granary patrol. According to the ancient book Cang Xie, a gun is a sharp sword. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was also a saying in popular literature that "chopping wood hurts and stealing guns".

According to these two paragraphs, it can be inferred that in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the familiar gun had not been invented. At that time, the word gun meant a sharp wooden weapon, or, more popularly, a very simple weapon. This conforms to the simplified spear, named gun to save iron.

Of course, the design of the gun also has some unique features. Compared with the flat spear, the central prism of the gun is more prominent, and it is easier to cause a hole-like wound when stabbing, rather than a flat wound that is easy to heal. This principle is very similar to the principle that the control knife is triangular. So to sum up, it is better to say that the spear was further improved and named gun in the long-term struggle and consumption war than the invention of gun.