How has war evolved from past to present?

War is a state of organized, armed and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, societal disruption, and usually high mortality. Countless wars have happened since from the pre-modern times. As time passes, war changes, it evolves at every stage of history due to the fact that at every stage of history, humans seems to be more mature in their thinking and in this blog post, I will examine the changes in wars from past to present.

Technology has certainly brought evolution to wars. Weapons certainly plays an important part in warfare. With humans venturing out to posses new scientific knowledge, weapons in warfare had certainly be improved to bring greater destruction to the opponent. In stone-age, when our ancestors fought wars with one another, they used spears and arrows made of stone and animal bones. Then followed by the bronze age, no longer stone, but bronze is used to make weapons. This shows clearly how new knowledge acquired by the humans were put to application in the creation of new weapons used in war. In the 9th century, a new chapter was marked out in human history and also warfare history when Chinese Alchemists discovered gunpowder. Gun powder was at first used for recreational uses such as fireworks. As time passed, fireworks could no longer satisfy the curiosity of mankind and gunpowder was put to experiment on weapons. For the following centuries, knives, swords, bows and arrows were no longer widely used in warfare and it was the era of modern warfare with canons, rifles, rockets, pistols. However, humans' search for new technology does not just end here. The industrial revolution was followed up by the inventions of cars, planes, steam ships, which was also added into the packing list for wars. New terms for warfare have also been coming out, such as "biology-warfare" which uses germs and harmful bacteria as weapons. Now, the moment we think about war, the first thing we have in our minds is the word "nuclear". Nuclear energy is indeed a powerful weapon that can cause mass destruction to your opponent in war, just take a look at the infamous bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mankind's crave for technology would certainly not stop and who knows what would be the weapon list for "future" warfare.

Causes and reasons to go to war have also change. In the past war happened because of disputes in basic needs like water, food, farmland. But look at modern warfare, which wars' causes is to fight for basic needed for survival? None! War now fought over the greed and desire of humans. The recent Irag war is a highly debatable topic in the world. The Americans claim that they fought the war so as to eliminate terror rule and Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity, but who know what is the real purpose of the US fighting the war, probably the US eyeing one the oil reserves in Irag.

Of course the destruction caused by wars have also evolved through out history.The use of high-tec weapons inevitably would bring massive destruction.In the past, the effect of war on future generations is not that serious and obvious but now with the use of these destructive weapons, the effect of wars are long lasting. For example in the Vietnam war, the use of Agent Orange by the Americans caused large number of fetuses to be deformed, this explain massive the destruction, modern warfare can bring.

The evolution of war through different stages in history, from the past to the present is very obvious. However there is something that will never change, "we know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know more about living".