When was the first war in human history?
Warfare is as old as civilization itself, and some experts believe that the earliest armed discords surfaced more than 10,000 years ago among prehistoric city-states of the Fertile Crescent [1]. These early confrontations were likely waged over resources, goods, or land. Yet, since these events predate the advent of writing by some 7,000 years, we have scant data from them, save for what archaeologists have been able to glean from the smallest fragments of information.
Following the revolutionary invention of cuneiform scripts by the Sumerian civilization (circa 3200 BCE), early scribes from Mesopotamia left behind history’s first-known preserved accounts of the war, involving Sumerians and Elamites, in and around the area of modern Basra, Iraq.
Although historians and archeologists have meager details of its causes, some speculate that it, most likely, emerged when the belligerent parties began to compete for limited resources – precisely when agriculture began to replace millenary, well-established hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Indeed, scholars believe this remote confrontation took place circa 2700 BCE, between the forces of Sumer and Elam when king Enembaragesi [2] led the Sumerians to victory.
At any rate, this remote conflict most likely constitutes just the first of a nearly constant series of ongoing military clashes in the region; given the archaic nature of both realms. As such, it is not surprising that the earliest military engagement was fought in the region when the Sumerians – led by Enembaragesi, King of Kish – defeated an invading force of Elamites, who represented their most significant historical foe.
Enembaragesi is known from inscriptions about him on vase fragments, as well as from later traditions. He was the penultimate ruler of the first dynasty of Kish.
He “despoiled the weapons of the land of Elam,” one inscription asserts.
His son, Agga, was the last king of such a dynasty, owing to his defeat by legendary Gilgamesh – king of Uruk - according to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish.
ADDENDA
- The Sumerians called themselves "black-headed people" and their territory “the land of the civilized lords.”
- The Elamites defined themselves as “Servants of Kirwashir” [3] and called their territory “HALTAMTI”.
[1] The Fertile Crescent is a horseshoe-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern Turkey, and the western portion of Iran.
[2] Enembaragesi (or Enmebaragesi) was the penultimate king of the First Dynasty of Kish [4] and is recorded as having reigned for “900 years” in the Sumerian King List.
[3] Kirwashir was an important Elamite divinity.
[4] The First Dynasty of Kish (c. 4401-2844 BCE) was the first Sumerian lineage after the “Great Flood,” according to most Sumerian King Lists. When the city of Kish was excavated, the earliest level was from the Jemdet Nasr period, ca. 2800-2400 BCE.
