AWA342 - How vulnerable were armies during the Bronze and Iron Ages to lightning strikes?

Ancient Warfare Podcast

The History Network

Society & Culture, Greece, Warfare, Ancient, Rome, History, Military

4.4 • 631 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Shabbi poses this intriguing question,'how vulnerable were armies during the Bronze and Iron Ages to lightning strikes, whether on the battlefield or while marching, given their use of metal weapons, armour, and formations in open areas?

Could such vulnerability have influenced ancient religions, particularly the widespread belief in storm and lightning gods in various unconnected cultures (like Zeus, Thor, and Indra)? For example, could events like lightning strikes swaying the tide of battle (if such an event is plausible) explain why so many societies independently developed lightning-wielding deities?'

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray.
0:09.4	I believe by the time you see this one, it will be happy new year.
0:12.4	So looking forward to another year of lots of answering your questions about ancient
0:17.8	warfare related topics, which is of, what we do here with ancient warfare
0:21.5	answers.
0:22.0	You ask questions, whether by postcard, look, new postcard, lovely, or email or commenting
0:27.5	on a previous video or podcast.
0:30.4	I get it.
0:31.3	I see whether I can answer it or whether I think I can answer it in 10 minutes.
0:34.8	And then we answer it.
0:35.9	You can, of course, be a patron, a patron on
0:38.6	Patreon of the podcast, ancient warfare, no podcast forward slash ancient warfare. And you can back us
0:45.5	at one of three different levels, legionary, Optio and Centurion. Now, we've got a couple of questions
0:50.7	and questions have been flooding in. So thank you. you will have noticed if you've asked a question it's a little bit of delay getting to them because there's
0:57.4	so many for me to get through anyway we've got a question today from shabby i'm assuming i'm
1:03.8	assuming i'm saying that correct and it's a really interesting one which i'll get to
1:08.2	there are of course some other things i'd like to say some small small, short ones. Obviously, in 10 minutes, I can't mention everything. I did one on
1:15.3	single combat, didn't mention Spolia Pima, and didn't mention the Battle of Isis. Apologies,
1:20.2	can't get to everything. And, of course, many times there's, you know, forehead slapping of,
1:23.9	oh, I should have mentioned. And one other that's come up really interestingly, the, when I made the answer about
1:30.6	light and heavy and medium infantry, there was a response that it was very much wargaming
1:36.2	that led to that.
	...

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