Ukraine is Using 2,400-Year-Old Weapon to Slow the Russian Advance

A Roman caltrop is on display at the Westphalian Museum of Archaeology Germany, and similar ones have been manufactured by the thousands by Ukrainian blacksmiths for the current Russian invasion. (Bullenwächter / CC BY-SA 3.0)

In the realm of area denial warfare, often the goal is not to prevent the enemy from advancing but to severely restrict, slow down, or endanger the invader.

In other words, sometimes it’s enough to simply make the act of advancing a miserable chore for the enemy.

Polyaenus of Macedonia, writing 500 years after the fact, claimed that at the Battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331 BCE), Persian King Darius III sowed the ground in front of his army with “crow’s feet” in an attempt to restrict Alexander’s freedom of movement.

Of course, we know that Alexander the Great won the day, but many historians now believe that Darius’ “crow’s feet” were, in fact, caltrops.

The original caltrop was nothing more than a wooden ball from which four metal spikes projected in such a way that when three spikes were on the ground the fourth was always pointed upward.

As you might imagine, this puncture wound in the feet of soldiers or hooves of the calvary would result in a painful, debilitating, and hard-to-heal injury — which could result in serious infection or slow death.

The injury was so nasty that the Greeks declined to apply poison to the spikes; they found that they were sufficiently deadly just left out in the dirt and…