The Mega-Wars That Shaped World History

[DGUtley]

The Mega-Wars That Shaped World History - Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts one of the single largest causes of non-natural mortality.


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While trying to assess the probabilities of recurrent natural catastrophes and catastrophic illnesses, we must remember that the historical record is unequivocal: these events, even when combined, did not claim as many lives and have not changed the course of world history as much as the deliberate fatal discontinuities that historian Richard Rhodes calls man-made death, the single largest cause of non-natural mortality in the 20th century. Violent collective death has been such an omnipresent part of the human condition that its recurrence in various forms, conflicts lasting days to decades, homicides to democides, is guaranteed. Long lists of the past violent events can be inspected in print or in electronic databases

Even a cursory examination of this record shows yet another tragic aspect of that terrible toll: so many violent deaths had no or only a marginal effect on the course of world history. Others, however, contributed to outcomes that truly changed the world. Large death tolls of the 20th century that fit the first category include the Belgian genocide in the Congo (began before 1900), Turkish massacres of Armenians (mainly in 1915), Hutu killings of Tutsis (1994), wars involving Ethiopia (Ogaden, Eritrea, 1962-1992), Nigeria and Biafra (1967-1970), India and Pakistan (1971), and civil wars and genocides in Angola (1974-2002), Congo (since 1998), Mozambique (1975-1993), Sudan (since 1956 and ongoing), and Cambodia (1975-1978). Even in our greatly interconnected world, such conflicts can cause more than one million deaths (as did all of the just listed events) and go on for decades without having any noticeable effect on the cares and concerns of the remaining 98 to 99.9 percent of humanity.

By contrast, the modern era has seen two world wars and interstate conflicts that resulted in long-lasting redistribution of power on global scales, and intrastate (civil) wars that led to the collapse or emergence of powerful states. I call these conflicts transformational wars and focus on them next.

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[Cotton1]

This sounds like a good documentary. I'll look for the next installment

[Peter1469]

Have you heard of World War Zero? This is not the conspiracy type theory of high tech past civilizations that zapped each other into oblivion, but hypothetical wars fought with the technology of the day. It does explain the sudden (a couple of generations) collapse of the ancient Bronze Age kingdoms described in the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History, 1)


Archaeologist talks about a Bronze Age ‘World War Zero’ that brought down three ancient civilizations






Back in March, we talked about a 3,200-year-old massive battle that took place in the cultural ‘backwaters’ of Bronze Age northern Europe (circa 13th century BC), and how this mysterious encounter involved over 4,000 well-armed men from different regions, including Poland, Holland, Scandinavia, and even Southern Europe. Intriguingly enough, there also seems to be a period-specific significance relating to the 13th century BC. Within a generation of these contemporary times, the increasing scale of warfare and over-arching political affairs seemed to have swept through many parts of the known world, including the eclipse of the Mycenaean Greeks, the invasion of Egypt by the ‘sea-people’ and the concurrent downfall of the Hittites.


And furthermore, there is also the literary narrative of the Trojan War – a large scale conflict (and possibly the proverbial ‘last hurrah’ of the Mycenaeans) that pitted the Greeks against the mystifying Trojans. Considering all these ‘mega’ events of the ancient times, archaeologist Eberhard Zangger has alluded to what he calls ‘World War Zero’ – a seemingly cataclysmic scenario that severely affected and ultimately shattered the thriving nature of eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age civilizations.


According to Zangger, the so-called ‘World War Zero’ (or at least some parallel event) was possibly triggered by the emergence of a more powerful Bronze Age civilization in the proximate region. According to him, this faction – often overlooked by historians, probably pertains to the Luwians, who were based in ancient Anatolia. So who exactly were these Luwians? According to Britannica –
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Zangger continues with his conjectural narrative about how these victorious Luwians then (perhaps) coveted the rich lands of the Egyptian realm. Thus come in the Egyptian texts that document the arrival of so-called ‘Sea People’ – who could have been the Luwians sailing across from ‘distant’ Anatolia to raid northern Egypt. Finally, threatened by the warmongering and other baleful international affairs, the Mycenaean Greeks braced up for an imminent invasion by the Luwians – by attacking the enemy first through their own large offensive, as described in Homer’s Iliad. However on nullifying this external threat from Anatolia (aka Trojans), the Mycenaeans squabbled among themselves, and soon civil wars snuffed out their flourishing culture – as hinted at in Homer’s Odyssey.



But of course, from the historical perspective, this expansive (and world-changing) sequence of events of World War Zero is entirely hypothetical – with no exact clue pointing to Luwian dominance in contemporary political affairs. And from the archaeological context, researchers have come across ruins of many Anatolian settlements (circa late Bronze Age) that bear the destructive marks of warfare – but the collective scope remains vague in (specific) relation to Luwians.


But since we brought up history, there are rare occurrences of ‘latent’ powers being ultimately responsible for toppling the more conventionally powerful empires, in spite of their relative unfamiliarity in global affairs. One pertinent example would obviously include the burgeoning Islamic realm (after Mohammed), circa 7th century AD, that managed to defeat two contemporary ‘superpowers’ of the time – the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) and the Sassanian Persian Empire, to claim their subsequent Caliphate.

[Chuck]

I would think the earliest tribal wars had the most long term effects; even on a small scale they would have had serious long term consequences, since they were nearly always genocidal in nature. Even the Nazis, with modern industrial equipment, transportation, and logistics couldn't eradicate entire peoples no matter how much effort they devoted to it. With tribes involving a hundred or two hundred people it would be pretty easy.