Military History : Ancient Assyria and Ancient Macedonia

• published: 11 Apr 2015
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By the eighth century BC, the Assyrians had created the largest empire to date - stretching from the Persian Mediterranean and encompassing the whole of the Middle East. Philip of Macedonia transformed a largely peasant society into one of the most effective and successful armies of antiquity. Ancient Assyrians starts at 00:10 Assyria was a major Semitic kingdom or empire of the Ancient Near East, existing in various forms during a period of approximately nineteen centuries from circa 2500 BC to 605 BC, spanning the Early Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age. Ancient Macedonians starts at 23:38 The Macedonians were an ancient tribe from the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, in the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Axios. Much of what we know of ancient history is the history of militaries: their conquests, their movements, and their technological innovations. There are many reasons for this. Kingdoms and empires, the central units of control in the ancient world, could only be maintained through military force. Due to limited agricultural ability, there were relatively few areas that could support large communities, so fighting was common. Weapons and armor, designed to be sturdy, tended to last longer than other artifacts, and thus a great deal of surviving artifacts recovered tend to fall in this category as they are more likely to survive. Weapons and armor were also mass-produced to a scale that makes them quite plentiful throughout history, and thus more likely to be found in archaeological digs.