Shattered skeleton is first confirmed death from trebuchet (science.org)
72 points by hermitcrab 5 days ago
N_Lens 9 hours ago
"What are you going to do, lob a stone at me from 300m away?" shouted the man on the parapet, moments before impact.
CTOSian 3 hours ago
more likely "...a furlong and more" ... no meters that time :}
SideburnsOfDoom an hour ago
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" - last words of Major General John Sedgwick, American Civil War.
avadodin 4 hours ago
"Let me show you its features".
paxcoder 8 hours ago
I hate this meme. Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool". And the other person still decides to use lethal force. That is diabolical, not funny.
WelkinFolk 7 hours ago
Diabolically funny, you mean.
bluefirebrand 6 hours ago
> Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool".
That strikes me as a wildly incorrect interpretation of the situation in the meme.
My reading is closer to a man on a parapet shouting "neener neener you can't touch me" moments before being touched by a rock at high velocity
lazide 6 hours ago
foxglacier 5 hours ago
CTDOCodebases 5 hours ago
Trebuchets were used in the Syrian civil war (2011-2024).
I would link a video but I don't think that is a wise idea for legal reasons. There were so many parties in that war and I'm not sure which ones were declared terrorist organizations.
johanvts 2 hours ago
Please don't censor yourself. It should be possible for you to share a video of something without that meaning you support it. You probably live in a country that has free speech? Use it.
I would like to see a video of a trebuchet. Modern or not.
defrost 2 hours ago
olmo23 4 hours ago
nexus6 2 hours ago
“The breaks indicate a very large area of impact and devastation,” she says. “It’s likely the individual was killed by a siege engine.”
So it’s likely, which means it’s not confirmed as the headline implies.
_mjk an hour ago
I don't get the nitpicking here. Scientifically correct, since circumstantial. Meteor is also possible, but very unlikely.
The probability regimes in which science is dealing often only leave marginal room for alternative explanations.
Levitating 6 hours ago
"...uncovered the graves of nine skeletons dated to the early 1300s. Five, including Skeleton 150, dated to the 1300s."
That seems like a contradiction.
kijin 2 hours ago
I parsed it as ((mass grave containing 9 skeletons) dated to the early 1300s) && ((5 skeletons) dated to the 1300s).
As in, the grave itself was dated, and 5 of the 9 skeletons found inside were also individually dated to roughly the same century. Maybe the other 4 were not tested, or turned out to have been buried at a later date.
normie3000 5 hours ago
I hate to contradict you, but it seems like a tautology.
darkerside 39 minutes ago
Five did, but nine did too
cobbzilla 7 hours ago
But have they identified the trebuchet that killed him?
We can rule out Warwolf [1] my favorite trebuchet, which never killed anyone.
Someone 4 hours ago
> We can rule out Warwolf
Can we? That Wikipedia page is inconclusive, and thus article says:
During Edward I’s 1304 siege of the castle, English forces deployed the recently invented trebuchet, a weapon first documented in the 12th century. A cousin to the catapult, trebuchets were capable of hurling boulders weighing more than 100 kilograms hundreds of meters. One at Stirling, dubbed “War Wolf,” “was the biggest trebuchet ever built at that point,” Buckberry says. Eyewitness accounts confirm the giant siege engine was used during the 1304 battle, tearing through two stone walls “as an arrow would fly through a piece of cloth.”
Accounts of the battle don’t mention any trebuchet casualties. But Buckberry says Skeleton 150’s injuries strongly suggest at least one defender was hit from behind by a flying boulder, launched by War Wolf or one of the other siege engines arrayed outside Stirling Castle’s walls. “It’s a huge amount of energy delivered in milliseconds,” Waltenberger says. “In skeletons from past times you rarely see this.”
JoeAltmaier 5 days ago
Interesting find! I wonder if the massive damage could also be explained by the falling wall (documented in the article).
hermitcrab 5 days ago
Indeed, I am sure there are other mechanisms that could cause similar trauma.
madaxe_again 2 hours ago
Unlikely, as a regular slow crush gives very different injuries compared to a high velocity impact.
kijin 2 hours ago
It depends on how tall the damaged structure was. A large chunk of masonry falling from a tower could reach speeds comparable to a car crash.
Georgelemental 7 hours ago
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331555
b3ing 7 hours ago
Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing
Swizec 6 hours ago
> Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing
from the article: “skull broken in 61 places”
Doubt you’d stay conscious long enough to notice
kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago
Instant unconsciousness. Hopefully he didn't wake up.
shevy-java 6 hours ago
How do you know that? Is it confirmed that this led to instant unconsciousness?
margalabargala 5 hours ago
smallnix 3 hours ago
Great Scott, I think we just hit someone!
helloworld 6 hours ago
Our modern weapons are far more destructive, but our propensity for violence and war seems to be an invariant across the millennia.
yurishimo 6 hours ago
War… war never changes.
shevy-java 6 hours ago
Well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
From 1935. And he was not the first one to point that out either.
I actually think that thanks to the internet, we expose many more criminal build ups towards warfare nowadays than before.
somenameforme 5 hours ago
Eisenhower's farewell speech [1] is also basically prophetic, which is quite unfortunate in that they were all warnings of things to vigilantly avoid.
[1] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
petesergeant 2 hours ago
> indicates horrific demise
If I go, I would like to go from massive blunt trauma from behind that renders me instantly unconscious.
delis-thumbs-7e 2 hours ago
Well I call you a WIMP! I want to go by literally shitting blood in an agonising pain an fever for weeks on end, like most people in these campaigns often faced their demise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysentery
Actually, you know what, I think you might have a point there. I take back ky harsh words.
shevy-java 6 hours ago
> 14th century
While this death may be the first confirmed from a trebuchet, is that really the first death by a trebuchet? Plus, I'd say catapults are almost identical to a trebuchet in workings, for the most part. I don't quite believe that this was really the first death by catapult.
pfdietz 4 hours ago
Catapults store energy using elastic deformation, like a bow; counterweight trebuchets store energy using gravity.
nephihaha 4 hours ago
Didn't the Romans have something similar?
johanvts 3 hours ago
The Romans had onagers and ballista, both of which work via string tension. Then around 6AD it seems string traction (mangonels) where introduced from China and finally counterweight/gravity was introduced in the 12th century.
nephihaha an hour ago
TheWrongGuy 5 hours ago
After all these years they finally got someone
noobmasterthrow 3 hours ago
i read death BY trebuchet, i am disappointed.
27183 9 hours ago
dude got absolutely rocked
xprnio 7 hours ago
What do you expect - it came in like a wrecking ball
kouunji 7 hours ago
Didn’t feel it though, cuz he was stoned.
s20n 5 hours ago
first confirmed case of MLG noscope