First biological weapons: 3300 years ago
Ancient Middle Eastern texts suggest that more than 3,300 years ago the Hittites may have sent rams infected with a brutal bacterial infection to their enemies as a form of biological warfare. According to researcher Siro Trevisanato, the disease Tularemia, also known as rabbit fever, jumps between species via insects. Form New Scientist:
He believes tularemia is to blame for a deadly epidemic dubbed the "Hittite plague" which raged through the Middle East in the 14th century BC. Around 1335 BC, letters to the Egyptian king Akhenaten reported a pestilence in Simyra, a Phoenician city near what is now the border between Lebanon and Syria.Link
The (letters from 1335 BCE to the Egyptian king Akhenaten) describe a terrible illness causing disabilities and death. Most tellingly, they mention that, because of the plague, donkeys were banned from being used in caravans.
According to Trevisanato, this indicates that the people living in the city were hit by tularemia. The disease can infect donkeys and the insects that they carry, so preventing the use of donkeys for transport may have been an attempt to quell its spread.
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Tularemia was found around the National Mall in Washington, DC in late September of 2005 after a massive anti-war protest. To this day, I believe that it was placed there by the government to test it as a biological weapon. There has never been any substantial follow-up as to why it was found.
How did the rams carry the blankets? ;)
As the article states the plague eventually came back to bite the Hittites. You can read about this in a series of Hittite (incidentally the first attested indo-european language) texts entitle the "Plague Prayers".
Also I think it's a bit suspect that the article doesn't consult one Hittitologist.
Yeah, right. The earliest mention of disease as being contagious was 1020 AD. In ancient times disease was believed to be the result of spontaneous generation.
Spontaneous generation was one theory among many, and different times and places had different notions of it.
Herdsmen may not understand the origins of microbial disease, but they're in an excellent position to notice that if a sick animal comes into a herd, other animals become sick in the same way. You don't need to understand more than that in order to know that sending sick animals in amongst your enemies' flocks will cause an epizootic infection.
My question is: since armies had to take food with them, some of which would still be on the hoof, how can they distinguish accidental from deliberate infection carried via Hittite stock?