Weapon Type
Spears & Lances
Thrusting pole weapons.
Spears & Lances
Pole Weapons — Subcategory
Overview
The spear — a sharpened point on a shaft — is the oldest deliberately shaped human weapon, appearing in the archaeological record over 300,000 years ago. In its thrown form it served as the primary hunting and war weapon of prehistoric humanity; in its thrusting form it was the dominant close-combat weapon for most of recorded history. The lance is the cavalry version — adapted for use from horseback, especially for the mounted charge.
The Spear
Prehistoric Spears
- Wooden spears — The Schöningen spears (Germany, c. 300,000 BCE) are the oldest known wooden weapons; balance indicates they were thrown
- Atlatl-propelled darts — The spear-thrower (atlatl) was the major ranged weapon until the bow; significantly increased range and velocity
- Stone tips — Knapped flint and obsidian spearheads appeared from the Upper Paleolithic onward
Ancient Military Spears
- Greek doru — 2–3 meter hoplite spear; counterbalanced bronze butt-spike; held in overhand or underhand grip in the phalanx
- Roman pilum — Not a thrusting spear but a heavy javelin; lead-weighted iron shank designed to bend on impact; thrown before closing with the gladius
- Germanic framea — Short throwing and thrusting spear; Tacitus noted the Germans relied primarily on the framea
Medieval Spears
The spear never disappeared from medieval warfare but was often overshadowed by the lance and pike:
- Infantry spear — Simple weapon; 1.5–2.5 meters; used with shield in shield-wall formations
- Winged spear — Projections below the blade prevent over-penetration and catch opponent's weapons; Norse and Carolingian
- Hunting spear — Heavy crossbar below the blade stops a charging boar; same principle applied to the military boar spear
Asian Spears
- Yari (Japan) — The primary weapon of Japanese infantry; multiple forms (straight, cross-bladed); see Feudal Japan
- Qiang (China) — The universal Chinese military spear; flexible shaft that vibrated unpredictably on impact
- Voulge, glaive, fauchard — European and Asian weapons in the spear-polearm continuum
The Lance
The lance is the cavalry spear — optimized for the mounted charge:
Ancient and Medieval Lances
- Xyston — Macedonian cavalry lance; 3.5 meters; used by Alexander's Companion cavalry in the wedge charge
- Medieval lance — Progressive development from a light throwing/thrusting spear to the couched lance by the 11th century
- Couched lance — Held under the armpit, braced against the body; transfers the full momentum of horse and rider into the lance point; the defining weapon of medieval heavy cavalry
- Coronel tip — Blunt star-shaped tip for jousting tournaments; reduced lethality for sport
Later Lances
- Polish winged hussar lance — 5–6 meters; hollow wood; remarkably lightweight; delivered devastating charges in 17th century warfare
- Military lance (19th century) — Revived by Napoleonic-era lancers (Polish and French uhlan regiments); proven effective in pursuit of routing infantry; used through WWI by some cavalry units
This article is a stub. Contributions covering specific spear and lance types, cultures, and battles are welcome.
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Clovis Point
The Clovis point is the signature stone weapon of the first widespread culture in North America, produced for a few centuries around 13,000 years ago. Knapped from fine stone with a distinctive channel — the flute — driven up each face from the base, it tipped thrusting spears and atlatl darts used against the continent's last mammoths and mastodons. Finds from Alaska to Central America make it one of the most widely distributed weapon designs of the entire Stone Age.
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Hoplite Dory
The dory was the thrusting spear of the Greek hoplite, the main weapon of the citizen soldiers who fought in the phalanx from the seventh century BC to the rise of Macedon. Seven to nine feet long, with an iron leaf-shaped head and a bronze butt-spike called the sauroter, it was held in one hand while the other carried the great round aspis shield. It won Marathon and Plataea, armed the Spartans at Thermopylae, and made the Greek heavy infantryman the most feared foot soldier of the Mediterranean world for three centuries.
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Roman Pilum
The pilum was the Roman legionary's heavy javelin: a barbed iron head on a long, thin iron shank socketed into a wooden shaft, thrown in a devastating volley seconds before the charge. Its genius was what happened after impact — the slender shank bent or snapped so the weapon could not be picked up and thrown back by the enemy, and a pilum lodged fast in a shield dragged it down and out of the fight. Every legionary carried two.
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Schöningen Spear
The Schöningen spears are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found: about ten wooden spears, most of spruce, excavated between 1994 and 1998 from an open-cast lignite mine at Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany. Long dated to about 300,000 years ago, and more recently argued to be closer to 200,000, they were made by archaic humans — Homo heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals — and lay among the butchered bones of more than twenty wild horses. They proved that humans hunted large game with carefully made weapons far earlier than many scholars had believed.
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Tepoztopilli
The tepoztopilli was the thrusting spear of the Aztec warrior: a wooden spear whose broad, flat head was edged on both sides with razor-sharp blades of obsidian, like a longer version of the macuahuitl sword-club. Shown in the Codex Mendoza and the Florentine Codex, it was roughly the height of a man and was used for thrusting and slashing from the second rank or against cavalry. Spanish conquistadors who fought the Aztecs in 1519-1521 described it with respect, and it was one of the principal weapons of Mesoamerican warfare.
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Winged Hussar Lance
The kopia was the lance of the Polish-Lithuanian winged hussars, the heavy cavalry that dominated Eastern European battlefields for more than a century. Up to six meters long, it was made of two hollowed halves of fir glued together, which made it light enough to couch and aim at the gallop and long enough to strike infantry behind their pikes. A ball-shaped grip and a long pennon completed it. Like a tournament lance it usually shattered on impact, but its first shock won battles from Kircholm and Klushino to the relief of Vienna in 1683.
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Zulu Iklwa
The iklwa was the short stabbing spear of the Zulu warrior — a broad blade up to 45 centimeters on a stout haft under a meter long, designed by tradition under Shaka himself to replace the thrown assegai and force battle to close quarters. Paired with the great cowhide shield and the encircling horns of the impi, it turned the Zulu into the most feared infantry in Africa, and at Isandlwana in 1879 it destroyed a modern British column in an afternoon.