Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare Magazine podcast.

My name is Jaspo Ortuz. I'm the editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And with me are Murray Dam, my assistant editor, Mark McCaffrey, Mark DeSantis, and Lindsay Powell.

We're in between two regular issues.

So we thought of a topic to amuse ourselves today.

And we thought of what was the most influential weapon of the ancient world.

And just to get us going, I thought I'd take a look at a book, an interesting book, about the very early history of warfare.

And he makes the point that, you know, a spear and a dagger and a bow and an axe are

all tools or hunting weapons.

That makes sense. But then when the mace comes in, that could potentially be

our first evidence of warfare, because once you're close enough to an animal to kill it, or maybe to

finish it off after you've taken it down with a bow and arrow.

There is no need to have a mace because you already probably have an axe

or you have a dagger to finish the job.

There's no need to invent a special extra weapon.

So his reasoning is but because a mace or, you know, essentially a further developed club

was invented, that means that that point there is actual warfare between very early tribes,

societies.

But the interesting, so you could say, that is a very, very influential weapon, but then it

kind of disappears almost immediately.

I think the Egyptians have clubs to some degree, but we come up with much more efficient

weapons, or people come up with much more efficient weapons that are far more widely spread.

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