A Short History of War

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some anthropologists once believed that humanity lived in a peaceful state that lacked large-scale warfare before the arrival of large civilizations and all its wealth inequality and manufacture of weapons. But archeological findings have shown over and over that warfare dates back as far as homo sapiens themselves (such as the Bronze Age Battle of Tollense River, about which we known nearly nothing, save that 5,000 soldiers fought each other with primitive weapons).
Throughout history, warfare has transformed social, political, cultural, and religious aspects of our lives. We tell tales of wars—past, present, and future—to create and reinforce a common purpose.

Today’s guest is Jeremy Black, author of “A Short History of War.” We examine war as a global phenomenon, looking at the First and Second World Wars as well as those ranging from Han China and Assyria, Imperial Rome, and Napoleonic France to Vietnam and Afghanistan. Black explores too the significance of warfare more broadly and the ways in which cultural understandings of conflict have lasting consequences in societies across the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Around 1300 BC, two armies of about 5,000 warriors assembled in northern Germany in two large
0:11.6	armies.
0:12.6	They were all meant between 20 and 40 years old, and many were veterans of other battles
0:16.8	and raids.
0:18.3	One side was armed with spears, bronze swords, knives, sickles, and bronze-stipped arrows.
0:23.4	Some of the warriors rode into battle on horses and slashed with their swords instead with
0:26.8	their spears.
0:28.4	For a thousand were killed, and many were wounded.
0:31.4	After the battle was over, bodies were stripped of their weapons, jewelry, armor, and valuables.
0:36.4	The bodies were then flung into the river.
0:38.8	Now these are all the things we know about this battle called the Battle of Talents Valley,
0:43.1	which is the largest battle of continental Europe in the Bronze Age that we know about.
0:47.1	But what's so cryptic is that we know almost nothing else about it.
0:50.9	We don't know who the two people were who were fighting.
0:54.0	We don't know what language they spoke.
0:56.0	We don't know why they were fighting.
0:58.3	We don't know whether it was actually a battle or a war, or if it was a raiding party.
1:03.0	That's because there are no surviving written records about this event.
1:07.0	We only know about it.
1:08.2	We don't know what the name of the battle was.
1:10.5	We only know about this valley because in 1996 an amateur archaeologist in the Talents
1:14.8	Valley discovered the first remains.
	...

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