Ancient War and the Environment

Hello, welcome back!

Now, close your eyes for 10 seconds and ponder on the word “War”. What came to mind?

Like me, I’m guessing you thought of devastating nuclear bombs, rifles, high-intelligence systems and deadly bioweapons. Well, these are characteristic of modern warfare, and arose from technological advancements. But before I start venturing into that notion of war most have, I decided to first understand ancient war and its impact on the environment. By understanding warfare’s first manifestations in humanity, I believe we can then better comprehend its modernisation and resultant increasing impacts on the environment.

A Painting depicting War in Ancient Rome (Source: Pixabay)

So, what exactly is ancient war? Though what is defined as “ancient” periods differ from region to region, it is commonly regarded to be from 3000BC to 476AD – the beginning of recorded history to the fall of the roman empire. Preceded by the Neolithic Age, I believe the war in ancient times was characterised by heavy reliance on animals, agricultural warfare and the use of melee weapons.

In ancient times, agricultural warfare was one of the biggest arms of the Scorched Earth Policy, which is defined as “the act of an army destroying everything in an area that could be useful to an enemy”. Techniques like burning by the Scythians, sowing weeds by the Assyrian, salting of cropland, and poisoning wells in Mesopotamia managed to render once prosperous grounds futile and unproductive. This devastated enemy food sources and production systems, therefore weakening civilisations through starvation.

Have you seen the wars in Narnia and The Lord of the Rings? Have a quick look!

Animals were used to wage war too. Despite the movies’ fictional and dramatic depictions of creatures at war, I could identify some common animal war tactics as used in ancient warfare. For combat, elephants were indeed used to trample and ravage enemy armies, and horses were employed for transportation. Other animals used included pigs, pigeons and even dogs.

Besides combat, animals were exploited as weapons, and the deployment of Entomological Warfare is a great example. “Scorpion Grenades” and “Bee Bombs” were utilised as weapons by the Roman Empire to cause physical harm, and fleas were used as vectors of disease.

Undeniably, ancient war was not just all about triumph and defeat of empires, it had dire ecological consequences too. I found it challenging to gather evidence quantifying their specific spatial and temporal extents, understandably, ancient war occurred ages ago. Despite that, modern examples can help us gain insight on them. For example, we know that introducing weed does way more than reduce crop yield, but also greatly interferes with biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Using animals can lead to mass death, seen from eight million horses perishing in WW1, and foreign animals introduced when invading land can alter ecology as invasive species.

The fact is that the environmental and physical impacts of ancient war were significant enough to destroy whole civilisations. The question now is “How do the impacts of modern warfare compare to them?”. To find out, stay tuned!

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