BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Trial and error or hit and miss? Either way you look at it, catapults were invented by ancient Greek craftsmen and put into practice long before the advent of mathematical models that revolutionized ancient technologies, a study of ancient texts suggests.

    "It seems that the early stages of catapult development did not involve any mathematical theory at all," said Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard University classics professor who led the study. "We are talking about so-called torsion artillery, basically an extension of the simple bow by means of animal sinews into something like the crossbow."

    When Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes happened along in the third century B.C., devices such as the catapult were merely refined with mathematical theories and made more accurate, the researchers discovered. The precise refinements also made the weapon more powerful and had an important political impact on warfare in the ancient world.

    The catapult got special attention from kings because it was an effective weapon, allowing previously impermeable cities to be attacked.

    "These machines changed the course of history," Schiefsky said. 

     Before the mathematical models were figured out by Archimedes and his contemporaries, it was assumed that craftsmen didn't have enough theoretical knowledge to make mechanical devices such as the catapult and scale balance, Schiefsky said. Perusing technical books — such as instruction manuals — going as far back as the fifth century B.C., Schiefsky and a team from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin discovered the ancients were, in fact, building the machines anyway.

    "They didn't all go to Plato's Academy to learn geometry, and yet they were able to construct precisely calibrated devices," Schiefsky said, adding that craftsmen combined some improvisational trial and error with years of practice to make their machines functional.

    When the mathematical theories were developed, construction became much more systematic, Schiefsky said. For example, the researchers found a distinct period in the ancient texts when the new ways of thinking were incorporated into catapult design.

    "At some point in the third century B.C., as a result of a process of intensive testing and experimentation fostered by the Alexandrian kings, a standard method for constructing these devices was developed," Schiefsky told LiveScience.

    (Agencies)