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This portal is dedicated to the knowledge of ancient warfare in ancient times, focusing on the early antiquity up to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, roughly 3500 years of warfare. With the help of the best web sources, ancient authors, archaeological evidences, recreations, illustrations, maps, animations, and screenshots from the highly praized Total War video game serie, choosed by history channel (Sega(r) - Creative assembly(r))

Ancient Chinese Warfare

February 2019: The whole range of ancient chinese armies and tactics Perpare to be blown away by one of the most ancient and innovative military tradition on the planet. At the time Hannibal's father hamilcar was pitted against Rome, then a local backwater, China was united by Qin after centuries or unrelenting warfare on an entire continent. The country that saw Confucius and Sun Tzu make war an art form and philosophy, also see invented the repeating crossbow, flamethrower, naval mines, missiles, rocket gun and cannon up to 1200 AD. Tactics and formations were an art with no comparison in complexity to the Western phalanx and turtles. This warfare form was most popularized between the Qin warring state era to the Three kingdoms (roughly 200 BC-200 AD) which saw amazing figures like tiger generals and heroes with legendary skills and weapons (such as Guan You or Lu Bu), or cunning poet strategists such as Zhuge Liang. And it goes with dozens of weapons types to match, derived from the "five families" such as the Ko (dagger-axe), saber (dao), spear (Qiang), halberd (Ji), and staff (Gun). A complete study of ancient warfare in China.

Ancient Chinese warriors

More on ancient Chinese warfare

Ancient-battles peeks into the ancient "sea peoples" or the achaeans and minoans from the bronze age and homeric times, but also the Mauryan empire and T'sin armies, the steppe peoples, the Celts, as the early, or at the opposite, very late romans, like the western "barbarized" ones, or the Byzantine, "Hellenized" romans. What we know apart the famous "triplex acies" of pre-marian times, triarii, principes, hastati, equites, and velites? Before this was the very early roman army composed of aristocratic cavalry or Celeres, derived from the Etruscan nobility, and a heavy phalanx composed mainly on spearmen by classes, and a reformed army by Dictator and general Marcus Furius Camilius, with six Censes classes, with rorarii, leves and accensii...

Agris helmet

Amfreville-sous-les-Monts helmet - Santons Gauls

Two splendid examples of cross-culture in the IVth Century BC, two ceremonial Gallic helmets of the era, widely decorated in Greek and Celtic patterns.

And what we know about the greek classic armies at this time, with hoplites and meprised psiloi and hippiko, and their opponents, the persians, and beyond the sparabara, takabara, kardaka and other troops ? -The greek-city states age became, with the Macedonian rise, the Hellenistic era, which created terms like "phalangitai, hypaspistai, chalkaspidai, argyraspidai, Leucaspidai, akontistai, peltastai, thureophoroi, toxotai, sphendonetai, thorakitai, hetairoi, prodromoi" were known and became a model for all combined army from the Herakles columns to the Indus river... A true encyclopedia of ancient warfare.