Just wanted to share this with you guys. Tis the season, after all. In many respects, the caltrop is the ideal passive weapon–simply constructed, cheap and easy to manufacture, requiring no special skill or training to use, easily portable, needing no care, maintenance or preparation, capable of recovery and, above all, extremely effective in most settings. It has killed or disabled innumerable soldiers, horses, camels, elephants and even land vehicles equipped with pneumatic tires. Silent, insidious and decidedly not glorious, the caltrop has few admirers. On the other hand, it has never been denounced in the same way as have the crossbow, poison gas, land mines and a whole arsenal of other weapons, ancient and modern. And unlike other weapons, it has never been completely replaced by more modern descendants. The original caltrop was nothing more than a ball from which four spikes projected in such a way that when three spikes were on the ground the fourth was always pointed upward. To step on it was to risk a laceration or puncture wound–painful, debilitating and hard to heal–which could result in serious infection or a slow death. The caltrop, therefore, bears a close family resemblance to snares, stakes, trenches and pits used singly or in combination to entangle or injure the feet of men and animals. Like those devices, it might well have originated as a hunting trap. https://www.historynet.com/weaponry-the-caltrop.htm