Evolution Of Weapons And Tactics Of Warfare

Evolution of Weapons and Tactics of Warfare

I. Introduction:

In this essay I would like to learn how weapons and tactics in warfare adapted throughout history. I want to take a look at how civilizations went from swords and bows in their armies to guns and tanks and look at how tactics that generals and soldiers used changed throughout the centuries. In history it has always been fascinating to me how breakthroughs in both weaponry or changes in fighting tactics changed the tides of wars. For example the use of chemical weapons in World War One, or the use of automatic weapons in World War Two, or the use of guerilla warfare in the Vietnam War. It seems to me that in a lot of the wars it was mostly a stalemate between the countries at battle

That leads us to the first weapon that world has seen, the spear. Before the spear was brought into existence humans had to use their fists as weapons. The spear was essentially the first weapon of history. Although it is impossible to know who created the first spear because it was so along ago, Micahel Marshall in his article states that, “The earliest evidence of humans using spears, in a part of Germany now near Schöningen in 400,000 B.C “(“Timeline: Weapons technology”). The next milestone for the evolution of weapons was thousands of years later in 20,000 B.C when the first bows and arrows are believed to come in existence in Africa. The next landmark for weapons was in the Bronze Age in 5,000 B.C where the first metal daggers and then metal swords were believed to be used in the Middle East. All of this information about the weapons above I derived from Michael Marshall’s article titled “Timeline: Weapons technology” that I sourced above. Now throughout all this time there were other small changes in weapons that would contribute to the evolution of weapons but these are what I believe to be some of the benchmarks of weapon evolution. What I believe to be the biggest landmark for the weapon evolution was, as Billy Hallowell states in his article,

When time first started all there was to a battle was the opposing sides lining up on opposite sides of a battlefield and then charging at each other until only one side was left. Now a days, depending on the battle and different elements, it would be better to use a previously used or discovered tactic to counter the specific tactic that the opposing side is using. The thing that is different about war tactics and weapons is that tactics that were used thousands of years ago could still be used today where weapons that were used thousands of years ago cannot. For example, now a days using spears and bows and arrows would be silly but, utilizing war tactics that were used around the same time that these weapons were invented, could be the smartest thing to do. I am going to focus on tactics that famous war generals or countries have used to win battles and examine why these tactics worked so well. First I am going to start off with the famous Chinese general who lived over 2,000 years ago but has taught the world war tactics that still apply to this day, Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu actually wrote a book called “The Art of War” that is still a really popular read book today. In this book he does not specifically state battle tactics and how they should be implemented because in reality that’s not plausible when each situation is