The Manubalista Was Rome’s Secret Weapon in Ancient Britain 🇬🇧 Secrets | Smithsonian Channel 

More like 50 feet.

Counter offer: 28ft. No way that is 17 yards away.

Actually the range of those small weapons was more likely 50 to 100 feet

@@JoaoSoares-rs6ec Didn't know that either! Either way though, they did not test it at that range.

At 1/4” plywood no less. One step above cardboard.

yeah roman polyester 👀

they are weak because they mostly do not follow the proportions and formulas which Greek engineers wrote down & use subpar material to provide tension also they barely crank the washers full way cause they are scared of hurting themselves

great point

nope they just made there's really underpowered

Romans used hair and sinew. There is a reported case of women in a baseige town cut all thier hair to used as balista ropes.

That's not plywood

and we're talking about a 100 ad weapon

That's plank wood not ply wood

Yes, you’re right. Plywood with its lamination would have stopped that….

the purpose of these probably wasn't so much as to punch through armor as to use as a long distance sniping tool. Rather than causing lots of casualties, one of these placed out of enemy range and aiming at the walls would keep the defenders' heads down so others could get close and do whatever they need to.

Shadows and Dust

Seems to have been more than the Hi-Point of it's day lol

Biggus Cheekus

Must have been designed by benellis and berretis

I rarely actually laugh out loud when reading comments. This did it. I can’t breathe

The wooden part of the projectile would likely have been dense like Red Oak. This example looked light, like balsa which is a common mistake made with ballistic designs; lack of adequate mass. Think about how far you can throw a hollow plastic baseball and an actual baseball. Most will think that throwing a lighter mass would go further on the same arm. But that's not what happens. The lighter mass never gets enough momentum to carry any real work to the target.

Yup and not to mention the Romans had huge balista which would make this shown in the video look like a child's toy.

Yes, they did used sinew bundles, and they were much stronger. The exact numbers I don’t know.

Yeah, they were insane. And until they were replaced with onagers, some threw stones too.

​@@derekheim8172 earlier and bigger would be it. But the latter would be metal fittings or all metal.

Why

@@justinscott1691 Indeed, we're still working with basically the same brains.

Romans were engineers.

That's the test, the average range for a small one was more like 50 to 160 meters, the larger ones 400 to 500 meters

It is not rated to the same level but to demonstrate the process.

I'll cut them some slack on this one, its just an old dood who spent years getting his pet project ready, and to have it not presented in the best light is a slight let down. But its still pretty cool.

He didn't say 'Fire', it's a mistranslation. He said 'iacce' in Latin that means to hurl or to throw.

Did not say fire. Must be you heard it in your imagination. Not uncommon in human retelling of events.

He did not say “fire”, but the subtitles on the screen did say it.

Not armor piercing though

@@rskat501 Not with that attitude

@@tanaka90 oh

Penetrates British buildings . Brits didn't wear girly armour

Balista more range and damage

Have you found out yet ?

I think it probably comes from "hand"

because most of that is modern terminology, ancient people preferred to classify them by purpose, projectile weight & length etc. and never bothered too much w/ a precise catalogue of denominations for each variation, especially since these were used in the timespan of over 700 years in an area ranging from Britain to India meaning lots of local as well as temporal variation in models, denomination etc

I knew that the historical account for the use of the polybolos was from a battle between two greek city states during the classical greek era.

completely seperate time period and nation but the hwatcha was very impressive it could shoot 100 arrows at once if youre interested

Same as you, Home Depot

They most certainly had assault versions as well.

They were probably designed to get stuck in shields.

Roman legions had thousands of men. They just did not use one such weapon. They had artillery teams, smaller more mobile teams and also high volume projectiles firing at targets. The romans could be saturated a target for days under constant fire. Now imagine 500 of those firing in strategic formations at a fort with rotational teams providing rest.

Das sieht eher aus wie eine leichte Skorpion nach dem man abgegeangen ist von der hellenistischen Bauart. So um 150 n.C.? Genau weiß ich es nicht mehr. Habs vergessen....

No they had artillery and rapidity moving teams.

It just shows the principle of the weapon piercing armour.

It’s literally a cheiroballista

@@AbdulhamidMohammed9000 Cheiro in Greek means hand and Manus in Latin means hand technically cheiroballista and manuballista are the same thing

A real weapon is known to have ranges far further than a bow. Probably out to about 300 meters.

That is not the case. They only tended to react when they were invaded.

@@Art-is-craft wow. You are unfamiliar with even rudimentary history.

@@HonestDepression101 Romans were first invade by the Gauls. The Romans fought them to a truce and they went their own ways. Gauls invaded again the next time Romans beat them they just conquered the Gauls. That then brought the romans up to the borders of other tribes and guess what happened history repeated. When Rome sacked Carthage they did so after being attacked twice and the third time the romans realised that Carthage was building up again they just destroyed it. It was a Di eat dog world in that era.

Roman weapons were designed to pierce armour and then get stuck. Very nasty weapons.

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me! Kenneth Williams' "Big Julie Caesar."

These canisters are just there to contain (and to shield from hits/humidity/etc.) the vertical sinew/hair ropes which propel the throwing arms forward. The ones in Gladiator use instead an all-wooden frame but the purpose is always the same. Projectile length and weight would vary depending on the model and tension power of the engine, both dart-sized as well as small-spear sized ones could be thrown by different engines (I mean, technically one engine can throw everything from small to large projectiles, but each machine was calibrated on a specific length/weight for maximum performance)

Imagine 500 of them being fired at 100 per time so that they could fire every 12 seconds 100 bolts. And they would be doing it for days on end. And on top of that they would be firing heavier artillery systems along side thousands of arrows, bullets and stones. They would be besieging a fortified position for days on end.