MEDIEVAL WARFARE

The Fertile Crescent and the Birth of Metal Weapons

Neolithic Revolution
Fertile Crescent
James Henry Breasted
Mesopotamia (“Land Between the Rivers”)
Nile Valley
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
Gaza Strip
Egypt’s “Splendid Isolation”
Semites
Semitic Languages (Arabic; Hebrew)
Indo-Europeans
Sumerians
Arnold Toynbee
Theory of Challenge and Response
First development of metal technology
Copper
Chalcolithic Age
Bronze (alloy of copper hardened by additive; usually tin)
Bronze vrs. iron:  why the switchover?
British Isles (main source of tin)
Hittites (first to use iron weapons)
Philistines (Palestine)
Assyrians (first to use iron weapons almost extensively)
Egyptian Empire:  based on weapons borrowed from the Fertile Crescent