Over the centuries, as war modernized, gas warfare continued to fascinate generals. Ancient Chinese are said to have used bellows to pump arsenic fumes in the direction of their opponents. after inhaling poison gas from a stove that pumped fumes from burning sulfur crystals and bitumen into tunnels where they were barricaded.
There, 20 Roman soldiers died in a battle in 256 C.E. In 2009, British archaeologists uncovered the oldest known evidence of a chemical attack at Dura-Europos, an ancient Roman city whose ruins are in the eastern part of modern-day Syria. And while the use of 'asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases' or 'bacterial methods of war' was banned at the 1925 Geneva Conference, under the auspices of the League of Nations, such weapons have emerged in conflicts around the world. Chemical weapons have a long, lethal history. Accounts of ancient chemical warfare, including the use of poisonous smoke and arrows, date back as far as the 12th century, B.C.E.
