Prehistoric Era, WARFARE

WARFARE

The main elements of war making  were basically the same in 3500  b.c.e.  as they were in 600 c.e., although the size of armies and the scope of wars increased  significantly over time. Techniques  and technologies  may have improved,  but  all wars involved the combatants in hand-to-hand struggle, usually with swords and spears, and long-distance fighting using bows and arrows,  in siege warfare, and in cavalry combats.  The following is a short list of some techniques and technologies of warfare that  showed advances over the period.
 

Cavalry. The horse came onto the battlefield pulling chariots as the Indo-Europeans moved out of their homeland in the crossroads of Europe and Central  Asia. It was a remarkable innovation. Sumer was known  to have used donkey-driven chariots  a bit earlier (3000  b.c.e.), but  the Indo-European Hittites  (1400 b.c.e.)  on horse chariots  rode into the heartland of Sumer without challenge.
 

The next advance after cavalry became an important component in warfare  was the invention  of the stirrup by Asian nomads  around 300 b.c.e.  About the same time the nomadic  Huns nailed a metal horseshoe  on the hoofs of their animals. With these inventions  horses could go farther  and faster and the riders gained fuller control  over their mounts.
 

India was the first land to use elephants  in battle.  Alexander  the Great first encountered the war elephant  in India.  Later the Romans  prized them highly. But elephants  did not adapt  well to cold. When Hannibal invaded Italy, only one elephant  survived the march  across the Alps.
Infantry and Iron Weapons. The horse did not make infantry  obsolete.  Improvements in providing protection for foot soldiers came with Sumer’s use of the shield (2500  b.c.e.). In Alexander  the Great’s day a whole company  of fighters would march into battle linked together  by shields to form a moving wall. This formation is called the “phalanx.” Ordinary citizen soldiers could learn the coordination  and discipline involved with the phalanx, and this esprit de corps continued into civic life and social interaction. In ancient Greece a dynamic of participatory government sprang from this expectation of battlefield  accountability. When combined  with Athens’s newfound opportunities on the sea, the aristocracy based on cavalry gave way to democracy  based on infantry  and navy. Individual  body armor,  used with the shield, protected soldiers in battle. By 250 b.c.e.  the Chinese had developed body armor  made of metal plates. The idea of “knights in shining armor” doing pitched  battle  is a fancy of the Middle Ages, as iron was simply too heavy and valuable for large-scale use. The Parthians (c. 250 c.e.) claimed that their horses ate Iranian  mountain alfalfa and were strong enough to bear their warriors in full (though  mostly noniron) armor.
 

The marauding Hittites  inaugurated the Iron Age with iron weapons  replacing  bronze ones. By
1000  b.c.e.  iron was common  for weapons  all over the Mediterranean world  and spread  to China after 500 b.c.e.  Even the Celts had become experts at smelting and used wrought iron on the battle- field by 750 b.c.e.
 

Sieges and Archers. The Assyrians, most feared warriors of the Near East, excelled in war-making technologies  and organization (extensive secret police, propaganda), crafting a united and long-lasting empire  out  of Mesopotamian city-states.  When  they advanced  against  the walls and  gates of cities, Assyrians used battering rams and siege engines that struck terror in the hearts of the inhabitants. When their soldiers marched  outside the city walls before battle,  the Assyrians would race around with their chariot-driven platforms of archers  and mow down  their hapless opponents. For 500 years the techniques of besieging cities did not change much, until the Romans  invented the catapult in 500 b.c.e., which hurled boulder  and flaming fireballs against the defenses of their enemies.

The bow and arrow  were among the earliest primitive weapons  used throughout the world. For the Greeks of the Iliad the bow and arrow  were despised and considered  effeminate compared with hand-to-hand combat,  the true test of heroes. Xerxes’ Persians (490 b.c.e.)  and Marcus  Aurelius’s Romans  (170 c.e.)  used archers to great advantage, as their arrows  would  blacken the skies before the charge of their infantry  and cavalry. The Chinese found ways of perfecting aim and power with the crossbow;  later the composite  bow originated among  the nomadic  tribes of the Asian steppes. Both were more accurate  and powerful  than  the simple bow.
 

Navies. In the 14th  century  b.c.e., the Achaeans  (Greeks) and others  took  to the sea. By 1200 b.c.e.  the first-known sea battle  was fought:  the Mediterranean Sea Peoples against  the Egyptians. Assyria and India each had seagoing ships by the early 700s b.c.e.  Besides the Phoenicians  and possibly the Etruscans,  the Athenians  were one of the first states to make seafaring their mainstay. From them  the use of the trireme  ship (a vessel with  three  rows  of oars)  took  on decisive importance in warfare.  Athens survived by controlling the seas. Navies became more and more important as civilizations  increased  their trade  and social contacts.  However,  for the most part  ships were used for cargo transportation, raiding,  and exploration. In warfare  they had a limited role. Thus, the natives of Oceania  put their seafaring to use in colonizing places such as Hawaii  and the Easter Islands, and the Phoenicians  explored  Britain and rounded the Horn  of Africa.