Bloody fighting between rival tribes and clans has existed since
the dawn of Homo sapiens, but war as we knew it began to take the
more organized forms we recognize today in the ancient Near East,
starting in the vital region near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
(modern Iraq) and ultimately extending west to the Mediterranean
Sea through what became the Holy Land of the Bible, a region
eventually contested by Egypt, the Roman Empire, and others, and
extending north and east into the mountains of Persia (modern
Iran). In this informed and accessible history, Arthur Cotterell
tells the story of how the story of the development of civilization
is also the story of the development of organized warfare This
story begins around 4,000 to 3,000 BC with the Sumerians, one of
the first dominant civilizations of fertile Mesopotamia, and their
wars with their neighbors. The Sumerians eventually gave way to the
Babylonians, whose period of dominance saw rudimentary "great
power" rivalries begin to form with the likes of Egypt and the
Hittites and the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC). This period resolved
with the fall of Babylon and the rise of other powers, ultimately
the Persian Empire of Cyrus and Darius, one of the great ancient
dynasties, which battled the Greeks directly (as chronicled in
Herodotus) and indirectly as rival Persian factions battled each
other (e.g., as chronicled in Xenophon's account of the storied Ten
Thousand). In the period that followed, the Near East was dominated
by Alexander the Great, whose legendary campaigns conquered Persia
and ventured east into modern India. This era saw the refinement of
the Greek hoplite tactics that remained standard for many hundreds
of years. After Alexander the Great, and the rise of the Seleucids
and Parthians where Persians once reigned, the Roman Empire began
to exert its power in the region, especially at its colonies in
Judea and Syria. Spanning some 4,000 years and drawing anecdotes
and quotations from ancient sources, Where War Began is a lively
narrative of the origins of war in a region that is still afflicted
by war and that still shapes global politics.
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