On this day in history: The Battle of Megiddo. In 1457 B.C., Egyptian forces of Pharoah Thutmose III defeat a large Canaanite coalition under King of Kadesh. This was the first battle recorded in a reliable account.
In this battle, Thutmose III crushed a coalition of rebels in Canaan. Aside from advances in military tactics and technology (like the composite bow), the confrontation at Megiddo was the first known case of an accurate play-by-play description of the battle, including the body count.
Humans tend to think in binary terms. When we hear about a battle our first question is almost always “which side killed more people?” Counting casualties is by no means an precise means of determining who won a battle, and it is near useless when determining who won the war, but it is nine times out of ten a good indicator of the side that came out on top, and for obvious reasons.
That said, it should come as no surprise that human leaders discovered that they could just lie about the casualties, and an accurate body count never happened ever again. The end.
(Alright I’m exaggerating a little, but you know what I mean).
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Ian Kummer
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