Origins of War
The earliest evidence of war is from the proto-Neolithic (c. 12000–8000 BC). It is of four kinds. First, four new weapons appeared. The bow and arrow, knife, and slingshot have other uses, so are inconclusive.
The mace is useful only for fighting, again inconclusive as fighting is not confined to warfare. Second, some early towns were fortified. The most impressive is the ten-foot thick wall incorporating a 25-foot high tower at Jericho. Some interpret the ruins to be a dam with a built in grain storage tower, but this seems an unlikely combination, given the effect of moisture on grain. Third, Saharan rock and European cave paintings show battles. That in Figure 14.1 from a cave in Morella la Villa, Spain, even shows an apparent flanking attack, suggesting tactics already had evolved. Fourth, beginning in the 1990s, forensic archaeologists began paying attention to skeletal evidence, concluding that on average about 15% of people in pre-state societies died violently (statistically reliable distinctions among accident, battle, murder, and sacrifice are not possible).2 This compares with about 3% in the earliest states, and a fraction of a percent today (Gat 2006, Keeley 1996, Pinker 2011). No one of these is conclusive. Taken together they suggest that fighting did exist in an organized form no later than the Neolithic.
Sumer, one of the first civilizations, was like ancient Greece a land of warring city-states. Sumerian cities maintained professional armies with infantry and chariot forces. Their troops were equipped with helmets, body armor, and pikes, and fought in phalanxes; their chariots evolved from four to two wheels. The earliest war we know of in detail began about 2500 BC over ownership of a province claimed by two city-states and continued on-and-off for nearly 150 years.
One of the more famous works of Sumerian art, the Stele of the Vultures dates from this war. The two Sumerian cities fought to mutual exhaustion, creating an opportunity for Sargon of Akkad (c. 2334–2279 BC), who conquered both to found history’s first empire. At one time or another this war involved alliances, foreign aid, hidden agendas, indemnities, negotiation, truces including one based on restoration of the status quo ante bellum, third party mediation, and even a deity, Sataran, dedicated to settling complaints (apparently, not very effectively). That is, the war already exhibits many devices of modern statecraft!This is not particularly surprising, as recent archaeological work has uncovered evidence (but not written records) of a war a thousand years earlier between the Sumerian city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and Hamoukar in the panhandle of modern Syria between Iraq and Turkey. Apparently, by 4000 BC, northernIraq was as developed as southern Iraq, challenging longstanding ideas about the development of civilization (but that is another topic). Both had cities with distinct administrative, religious, production, and residential areas. Relations between north and south remain to be unraveled but some sort of trade relationship seems likely. Whatever that relationship, it apparently broke down in about 3500 BC, resulting in the destruction of Hamoukar. The walls collapsed under fire and bombardment. Uruk was able to mobilize and march an army to besiege and conquer a walled city some 500 miles to the north at this early date. Development continued in the south, while the north became a backwater (International Herald Tribune, 17-18 Dec. 2005).
Prehistoric Egypt seems to have consisted of small kingdoms that gradually absorbed one another until Narmer3 unified it, apparently by force although some debate remains about this. Nearly 2000 years later, Egypt, facing threats to its trade with the Levant, had been attempting for several decades to secure the area from the Hittites who were expanding into Syria from their Anatolian homeland.
In the fifth year4 of his reign, Pharaoh Rameses II led a paid professional 20,000-man army divided into four divisions each consisting of 4000 bowmen and spearmen and five hundred two-man chariots. Each division could operate independently or maneuver as part of a larger force. There is considerable dispute as to the identity, size, composition, movements, and role of a fifth unit, the Ne’arin, which probably marched independently along the coast to protect the Egyptian flank. Overall, it was an extremely sophisticated organization.The Hittite KingMuwattilis had more and heavier, but slower three-man chariots supported by a large body of less reliable levies of infantry from the Syrian part of the empire, probably highly variable in their weaponry, discipline, and loyalty. Thus, two different military systems clashed at Kadesh in the first battle known to historians in strategic and tactical detail. One was an Egyptian army of infantry with missile and close-fighting capability including highly mobile light chariots that depended on firepower. The other was a Hittite army of heavy chariots that relied on shock, with heavy infantry probably limited to a defensive role because it lacked the organization to maneuver effectively.
Syrians “deserters” fooled Rameses into believing the Hittites had fled. He rushed forward with his lead division to capture Kadesh, leaving three divisions trailing behind. The Hittites ambushed and destroyed the second division on the marchand then surrounded Ramses II who was making camp with his single division. Thinking the battle won, the Hittites began looting the Egyptian camp. Ramses II organized and personally led a counterattack at the same time that the Ne’arin appeared unexpectedly to attack the Hittites in their rear. After the battle, Ramses II retreated, temporarily losing control of Palestine and possibly creating the opportunity for the Hebrews to establish a state in the hills above the coastal plain. The Hittites advanced but did not achieve any permanent gains south of Kadesh. The battle stabilized the boundary, which combined with the emergence of Assyria as a greater threat to both led the Egyptians and Hittites into an alliance confirmed by a treaty signed a dozen years later.