What do the stone arrows found in caves in South Africa show?

Stone arrows found in caves in South Africa show that people have used bows for at least 6000 years. The collapse of civilization has stopped constructive wars, and this is not only happening in South Asia. In fact, as early as 3 100 BC, something similar may have happened in Sumer. We have no clear evidence, but the control right established by uruk City collapsed at this time, and Uruk City was burned down. In the following centuries, West Asia was divided into several city-states and fought endlessly.

Around 2200 BC, a greater upheaval took place, which destroyed the Akkadian kingdom of Sargon the Great and the ancient Egyptian kingdom, and even spread the disaster to the other side of the Mediterranean. At the same time, a similar (but smaller) crash may have occurred in China. People are arguing about the real cause of these collapses. But after 2000 BC, things gradually became clear. From this moment on, we can see that the RMA itself may be the source of great instability.

The fourth major military revolution did not take place in the fertile crescent or the cities in the Indus valley, but in the barren grasslands of Ukraine today. Around 4000 BC, hunters here tamed wild horses. Like those who domesticate cattle, sheep and pigs in lucky latitudes, the herdsmen here only wanted to get more meat supplies at first.

However, around 3300 BC, they had a brilliant idea. On the grassland, whether we can quickly move from one water source to the next is often a matter of life and death. Herdsmen put on their ponies, which greatly enhanced their mobility and viability.

Progress is accumulated little by little. By 2 100 BC, today's herders in Kazakhstan have cultivated horses with larger bodies and longer legs and trained them to pull lighter carriages. These horses are much smaller than most modern horses, but the light carriage (two-wheeled chariot) they pull is a great thing. Businessmen and immigrants (probably a little-known nation: Hulite) crossed the Caucasus mountains in these chariots around 1900 BC and came to the fertile land of the new moon. At first, these chariots were used for transportation. But a century or two later, they were transformed into military equipment and immediately brought revolutionary changes to constructive wars.

The use of two-wheeled chariots is not as often described in costume war movies, as if tanks rushed into the enemy's battle. Two-wheeled chariots are difficult to operate and very fragile (the weight of two-wheeled chariots may be less than 100 pounds in14th century BC). If you want to attack the disciplined infantry who hold their positions, the horses will also panic. The advantage of a two-wheeled chariot is not its weight, but its speed. A light two-wheeled chariot can carry two or three soldiers in armor, usually a rider, an archer and sometimes a shield. Such a two-wheeled chariot can turn a slow-moving infantry into an arrow target. The ancient Indian epic "Mahabharata" once described that the arrows shot by chariots were so dense that they "covered the sun". .

The mottled stone arrows found in caves in South Africa show that people have used bows for at least 60 thousand years. However, as far as we know, it was not until around 2000 BC that people began to use what modern experts call a single bow, which is made of a narrow piece of wood and animal intestines. Because few wooden bows have been preserved and discovered by archaeologists, we are not very clear about the details of this kind of bow. However, later archers began to glue two or more different kinds of wood together to enhance the power of weapons. This trend may have started from the grasslands of Central Asia.

New inventions appear faster and faster. About BC 1600, people in Crescent Wodi began to use a new type of bow-compound bow. Instead of using a single narrow piece of wood, craftsmen bent the bow tip forward to make their arrows more powerful. The effective range of most single bows is less than 100 yards, while the range of compound bows is four times that of single bows, and their arrows can penetrate anything except metal armor.

The compound bow may also have been invented on the grassland, and may even have been introduced into the lucky latitude zone together with the two-wheeled chariot. But no matter what the details are, the combination of two-wheeled chariot and compound bow changed the situation on the battlefield. At first, the role of two-wheeled chariots may be secondary. What chariot drivers have to do is to shoot arrows at enemy infantry, disrupt their formation and facilitate spearmen's attack. Later, the ruler found that the effect of the two-wheeled chariot was excellent, so he gradually stopped deploying a large number of infantry. From then on, the victory or defeat of the war depends almost entirely on "those chariot drivers who circle around each other and have arrows raining down" (still quoted from Mahabharata).

Before BC17th century, the battlefield was already a terrible place. Thousands of infantry pushed and shoved, armed with bronze spears, stabbed them in the throat and face from above the enemy shield, or stabbed them in the crotch and thighs from below the shield. After the war, hundreds of bodies were often left on the battlefield, and more wounded people were lying on the ground and dying slowly, just as Shakespeare later described the battlefield: "Some were cursing, some were yelling at the doctor, some were crying that he had left his bad wife, some were calling that he had not paid back his debts to others, and some were calling on him to stop touching. I am afraid that few people who die on the battlefield will die like children! " By BC 1600, the degree of terror on the battlefield increased by one point.

Generally speaking, horses are the target of adults, and they don't wear armor. Therefore, the quickest way to stop a two-wheeled chariot is to shoot an arrow at the horse that pulls the chariot, or let brave people stick to the front line, cut the horse's hamstring when the chariot passes by them, or let it gut (stragglers standing outside the front line will hold terrible sickle-shaped knives for this). In the next 3,500 years, until the 20th century, the battlefields in Eurasia will be full of not only screaming and bleeding humans, but also quiet and bleeding horses.

Centuries later, the two-wheeled chariots spread from the grasslands of Kazakhstan to more places: China in BC 1200, and India in 600 BC, which was still recovering after the collapse of Indus civilization. From the Mediterranean coast to the coast of China, the design of two-wheeled chariots is essentially the same, which shows that they come from the same source. It was the immigrants and businessmen from Central Asia who brought the two-wheeled chariot to the fertile crescent moon in the lucky latitude belt of Eurasia. In every place, two-wheeled chariots meet people's same needs for maneuverability and firepower, and also bring similar chaotic consequences.

If an organization has its own good way of doing things, then it will be unwilling to accept a new way, which may be part of human nature. A similar thing happened in a two-wheeled chariot. On the fertile land of the new moon, it was not a big country like Egypt or Babylon that first started to use two-wheeled chariots, but some smaller and more marginalized countries, such as Gahit, Hittite and Hixos. From about 1700 BC, they began to defeat, plunder and sometimes even overthrow the rulers of richer countries.

Similarly, in BC 1046, the Zhou tribe, who was more willing to accept two-wheeled chariots, overthrew the Shang Dynasty in China. However, only when the largest and richest countries finally accepted the two-wheeled chariot (Crescent Moon in 1600 BC, China in 1000 BC, and Indian in 400 BC) did the two-wheeled chariot really enter the golden age, because only rich countries had enough strength to properly apply it.

Two-wheeled chariots are very expensive. According to the Bible, King Solomon of Israel has to pay 600 shekels of silver for each chariot, and an additional 65,438+050 shekels for each horse. You know, a slave was worth 30 shekels at that time. A written document of the Hittite Empire in BC14th century explained why two-wheeled chariots were so expensive. It records the seven-month training plan of two-wheeled chariots and horses day by day.