Prehistoric warfare

This history of human conflicts goes back much farther than written histories and oral traditions. Prehistoric warfare consists of battles that occurred before record keeping began. These battles may have left behind archaeological evidence, or they may only be recorded in historic texts recalling rumors of ancient battles that were passed down through oral histories. Many different types of conflict occurred in prehistory; not all are considered warfare, as scholars typically define warfare as organized aggression between autonomous groups. Prehistoric battlegrounds have been found on every continent other than Antarctica.

Background

Prehistoric events, by definition, are those that were not recorded in writing within living memory of when they occurred. Because there is no written record, archaeologists investigating a potential prehistoric battleground must look for physical evidence that warfare took place. One indication is the presence of human remains that exhibit unhealed marks of conflict, such as skull fractures, broken legs, or evidence of contact with a weapon. Often these bodies were not buried, but instead were left to the elements and preserved by chance over a long period of time. When the bodies were buried, warfare is often indicated by the appearance of a mass grave filled with the remains of people who appear to have died at the same time. Evidence of weaponry is also sometimes found, although depending on the time period, weapons may have been collected and reused by the winning or surviving parties.

While some scholars argue that warfare is a recent occurrence, evidence of prehistoric warfare has been found throughout the world. This does not mean that all prehistoric human communities engaged in warfare, but rather that prehistoric warfare occurred on all continents. Scholars frequently debate about the makeup of these communities. Some believe that nomadic foragers engaged in warfare, while others believe that warfare did not emerge until humans began settling into villages and developing agriculture.

Overview

Prehistory is typically separated into different periods based on the types of tools that were used at the time. The main three categories are the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; the Stone Age is further subdivided into the Paleolithic (old stone), Mesolithic (middle stone), and Neolithic (new stone). While the dates of these periods vary in different regions of the world, the Paleolithic is generally considered to have started around 2.6 million years ago, the Mesolithic somewhere between twenty thousand and eleven thousand years ago, and the Neolithic between about eleven thousand and eight thousand years ago.

Stone Age

During the Paleolithic, which was characterized by the development of primitive stone tools, humans lived in hunter-gatherer groups. Anthropologists have long believed that Paleolithic societies were relatively egalitarian and peaceful, with warfare only emerging as societies transitioned to a more sedentary lifestyle. This belief, while not refuted entirely, has been challenged by the discovery of Paleolithic-era mass graves that appear to be the results of deliberate attacks. The oldest such grave discovered to date is the Jebel Sahaba site in Sudan, dated to around thirteen thousand years ago, during the late Paleolithic. Between fifty-eight and sixty-one buried skeletons were excavated from Jebel Sahaba in the 1960s; in 2002, the remains were transferred to the British Museum, and subsequent analysis revealed for the first time that at least twenty-six showed evidence of violent death, including projectile impact marks and fragments of projectile points found in and around the bones.

Evidence of similar warfare was found at Nataruk, near Lake Turkana in Kenya, in 2012. Archaeologists discovered the remains of twenty-seven individuals, including twelve nearly complete skeletons. Ten of these twelve skeletons showed clear indications of violent death, such as skull fractures, arrow marks, and projectile points. The bodies were not buried but rather had been preserved in the sediment of a long-dried lagoon bed.

The Neolithic period is considered to have begun with the transition of human societies from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one that was more settled and centered on agriculture. With this transition came an increasing population and a growing sense of property and boundaries, which in turn gave rise to greater intergroup conflict. Among the earliest known fortifications constructed around human settlements are the rock-cut ditch and stone wall surrounding the city of Jericho in Palestine, dating to around 7500 BCE, and the wall surrounding the early settlement of Sesklo in Greece, built in the early seventh millennium BCE; however, the military nature of these fortifications is debated, with some scholars arguing that they may be flood defenses or social boundary markers instead.

Evidence of active warfare in Neolithic Europe includes several mass graves found throughout western Europe. One such grave, discovered near Schöneck-Kilianstädten, Germany, in 2006 and dated to around 5000 BCE, contained the remains of twenty-six adults and children—possibly an entire village, minus the young women, whose remains were not found with the others. The remains showed signs not only of violent death (skull fractures, arrow wounds, two arrowheads) but also of either premortem torture or postmortem mutilation, as more than half of the individuals’ shinbones were smashed. Apart from the broken shinbones, the site is reminiscent of two other mass graves that were discovered in Germany and Austria in the 1980s and date from around the same period. All three sites appear to contain all of the inhabitants of a village—usually around thirty to forty people—except for the young women, whom scholars speculate might have been kidnapped and kept alive by the victors of the battle.

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is characterized by the emergence of bronze weapons. While communities continued to produce stone and wooden tools, the development of bronze—an alloy of copper and another metal, initially arsenic, although tin later become common—allowed for the production of deadlier and more efficient edged weapons, such as swords and daggers. As these weapons were more valuable than stone points and projectiles, they were less likely to be left on the battlefield.

Evidence of warfare during the Bronze Age can be found in the ruins of Mesopotamia, where Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians came into conflict. The Akkadians became famous for building a vast empire through conquest and capture. During the Akkadian Empire’s expansion under Sargon, who ruled from around 2334 to 2279 BCE, the military continuously produced weapons and recruited solders. An inscription dating from Sargon’s reign asserts that he "was victorious in thirty-four battles." (The Bronze Age in Mesopotamia straddles the line between prehistory and history, as cuneiform script was developed in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BCE.)

During the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, which lasted from about 2686 to 2181 BCE, warfare was well organized by the military and was a common occurrence both with neighboring communities and as a way to resolve conflict within the kingdom. While a professional army did not exist, regional governors could be asked by the pharaoh to raise volunteer armies for battles. These solders used a variety of weapons, the most common being the bow and arrow. Egyptians recorded many of these battles on both scrolls and temple walls. (While Egypt, like Mesopotamia, had developed a writing system by this time, many of the surrounding communities with which they fought had not yet begun to use written records.)

One of the latest Bronze Age cultures in the Mediterranean was the Mycenaean civilization, which controlled Greece between about 1600 and 1100 BCE. The Mycenaeans invested heavily in military infrastructure, building fortifications of massive boulders around their palaces and strategically placed forts in more isolated areas. Archaeologists have also found a wide variety of weapons that the Mycenaeans developed for use in warfare, including several types of swords and spears, as well as axes, slings, maces, and bows. Many solders also wore armor made of bronze and carried shields.

There is also evidence from the Bronze Age, found both in legends and in mass graves, that women were actively engaging in battle. Ancient Greek poems and records refers to warrior women called Amazons, who were long thought to be mythological inventions until archaeological evidence revealed that they were most likely Scythians, nomadic peoples who occupied the central Eurasian steppes from about the ninth century BCE to the second century CE. Scythian tribes were small and centered on horses, and they are believed to have fought from horseback with spears and bows and arrows. Evidence suggests that the women fought alongside the men, and at least one-third of women whose remains were excavated from Scythian burial mounds were buried with weapons and showed indications of war injuries.

The end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean and Near East is a difficult period to study because of a sudden paucity of written records among those civilizations that had developed writing systems. This disruption in the historical record began around 1200 BCE, at the same time that numerous cities along the eastern Mediterranean were destroyed and a number of cultures in the region, including the Hittites and the Mycenaeans, began to fall apart. The reason for this widespread destruction, often referred to as the Late Bronze Age collapse, is unknown, but several theories have been proposed, including climate change and a series of raids by a heterogeneous group of Near Eastern peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

Also dating from this time is evidence of Maya warfare, which has been found at many sites throughout South and Central America and can be used to track the expansion and contraction of Maya civilization. For example, at Aguateca in modern-day Guatemala, there is evidence of a city with defense fortifications that was occupied from about 200 BCE until 800 CE, when it was attacked and destroyed. Weapons have also been found in the area, including spear tips made of obsidian, and evidence of spear construction was discovered in certain parts of the city. Scholars have determined that these weapons were used within the community during events such as power struggles between two different community members. The same weapons were also used to protect the city against its enemies.

Iron Age

The Iron Age was marked by the discovery and use of iron. Some communities were already keeping written records at this time, and as such are not classified as prehistoric. However, these communities often came into conflict with others that had not yet adopted written record keeping. For example, during this time period the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people, first migrated from Europe to modern-day Britain, where they engaged in warfare from 450 BCE to 1066 CE. There are many written records about the end of the Anglo-Saxons’ reign, but little about the beginning. What do exist are a number of artifacts such as armor, weapons, graves, and sometimes grave goods, which are items intentionally buried with the dead. The Anglo-Saxons also left a number of carved stones depicting images of their battles.

In North America during this time, the Ancestral Puebloans, precursors to the various Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, are believed to have engaged in warfare with surrounding nomadic groups, as evidenced by the existence of large fortresses and of communities that seem to have been abandoned after a war. Some scholars argue that these wars were caused by a combination of climate change and population growth that put pressure on a limited supply of resources. Ancestral Pueblo culture emerged in the area of the Colorado Plateau, at the convergence of modern-day New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, between 1130 and 700 BCE. The Ancestral Puebloans established large communities, farms, and trade networks and constructed the pueblos and massive defensive cliff dwellings commonly associated with Pueblo culture, which are believed to have been built with defense in mind, particularly to protect crops against raiding communities. However, sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth century CE, these communities were abandoned. Archaeological evidence and oral histories indicate radical changes to the climate, namely a centuries-long drought, along with cultural changes. It is believed that some pueblos were intentionally dismantled before their inhabitants migrated farther southwest. Mass graves from this time have also been found in Colorado, indicating that as the pueblos were abandoned, warfare might have broken out among community members.

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