Building Defenses One has to wonder how long humans have been fighting each other. It seems it was since Cain and Abel were on earth. We keep finding evidence of humans trying to protect themselves from other humans throughout history. It is a sad fact, but a true one. Many of us know about the ancient monuments which were built like Stonehenge and others, some of which were even older. A site has been found where a couple of homes existed from 6,500 years ago. It is thought the people who lived there were monument builders. Around the couple of homes was a stockade and a wide trench surrounding the entire area. There is no doubt people were scared of being attacked. It is said the Sumerians had the first civilization and dated back to about 6,000 years. This means there might not have been any organized armies. So, who could have attacked? It might have been roving bands of humans who attacked because they wanted what others had. When we give this serious thought, things haven’t changed much at all. Sometimes countries attack other countries for the same reason. It is not always the reason, but it is much of the time. For example, the attack by the Russians on Ukraine was because they wanted their land. It is a reason as old as time itself. India was the home of many fortifications even before the 4th century B.C. In the beginning some of the fortifications were made of the sand which was piled up for protection, this dated back much further in history. The reason the 4th century B.C. is so important is the fact by then fortified cities became quite common in that country. There seems to have been much infighting as witnessed by what happened when Chandragupta Maurya gave up his seat of power to his son Bindusara who had a war with his brother and defeated him. Scientists call this area one of the oldest inhabited regions and claim hominid activity was present there more than 250,000 years ago. Attacks on different parts of India took place over thousands of years and even today, the Chinese, Pakistani and Indian armies have skirmishes. When organized armies were formed it seems the carnage was even worse. Babylon started out as two countries, Sumer and Akkad. The successors to Akkadians were the Amorites and they were conquerors and had conquered Mesopotamia by about 1,900 B.C. Babylon was a fortified city. It had walls and fortified gates to protect it. As a matter of fact, it was the world’s largest city at the time being about 4 square miles. A massive double wall and a large ditch surrounded the city. Ancient Egypt was an area which had people living there, tens of thousands of years before the country was formed. It began to have wide spread settlements about 6,000 years ago. Battles took place over the ownership of the rich land on both sides of the Nile river. Egypt was united around 3,100 B.C. Egypt led the world in fortifications during the period of 3,000 to 1,780 B.C. An Egyptian fort was found which dates back to 2,900 B.C. I guess this should be no surprise as we know what great builders the Egyptians were. They had fortified cities and fortified military bases. The ancient Egyptians had many enemies over the years such as the Nubians, Canaans and the Libyans. The ancient Greeks were good at building fortifications and Mycenaean Greece was famous for the cyclopean walls. These were walls built out of huge stone blocks. There were military garrisons built as a sort of castle much as the Romans copied. Cyclopean walls were built with or without mortar and stones fit very closely together. They were an incredible construction and some of the stones were so heavy as to make us wonder how they did it. When the Romans came along, they seemed to have copied some of the ideas of Greek construction and even the Greek gods, which they renamed. They had a lot of respect for the Greeks even though they conquered them and having a Greek slave in your household was a sign of prestige. One of the things the Romans were famous for was their engineering. They could build structures in record time, some of which still stand today. They built many fortifications and some of these were still used by others hundreds of years or more later. They were big on building stockades around their encampments. Hadrian’s wall, a Roman construction, was started in 122 A.D. It stretches 73 miles and was used to protect the Romans from the tribes in the north. It consisted of the wall and forts all along the length. Perhaps the golden age of fortifications were the castles. Who doesn’t like to see a castle? As castles were being built over the centuries by all different countries, the technology kept getting better and better. Moats and drawbridges were added, a keep was added and inner walls and even kill areas. Not all structures called castles are traditional castles. Maiden Castle in England is a prehistoric earthwork. The idea castles developed from the 9th century A.D. has been accepted. The idea people needed protection has been held over into modern times. While we no longer build castles, we do build walls at our borders. The United States lately has been trying to buck that trend, unfortunately for us. Many times the protection we seek is being guaranteed by our police force or in the case of the military by our weapons instead of physical barriers, although the idea of using the bowels of the earth for protection still exists in the form of underground bunkers which have been reinforced and are used to protect members of the government from nuclear attack. Our ancestors never could have imagined such powerful weapons in the past, except for India which had tales in ancient manuscripts of stories which seemed to talk about nuclear attacks and flying machines. The truth of the matter is probably no one will survive the next world war. The United States has enough nukes to destroy the world many times over so if another country has twice as many, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore, after all how many times over can one destroy something, I believe only once. Even if some people survive in bunkers, the world they come out to might be a dead one, so even their survival might be that of a limited one.
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