Death Zone V

The origin and history of mountain warfare

It comes up every time. Sooner or later. It is inevitable. When talking about mountain warfare someone in the audience will start to think about Hannibal and his famous march about the alps with his troops and his elephants.

So, after all the speeches and after all the technical presentations, while we are standing around, sipping on our drinks and trying to remember the correct pronunciation of all those foreign names, someone will always bring up Hannibal as the example of the first mountain warfare in human history. There is something irresistible about this famous Carthaginian army commander.

The true story is much less magical than the fairy tales our schoolmasters told us. Historical sources agree that these elephants really did exist. The number of elephants actually used is not known. Today, historians speak of 37 elephants, but unfortunately, all but one of these 37 elephants are said to have died crossing the mountains. So elephants did not decide the battle for Rome.

For us as soldiers, however, it is much more important that Hannibal fought for 15 years in Italy trying to defeat the arch enemy of Carthage. And that he failed. And that Carthage was ultimately defeated by the Roman general Scipio Africanus. It is a warning from history that it is not enough to have a brilliant military commander.

Hannibal was a gifted general and a tactical genius, but he did not invent mountain warfare. Mountains have always played an important role in the course of wars. They formed a natural border, protected against attacks and were an obstacle for any attacking army.

If we are really interested in the location of the first major mountain wars, we have to talk about the Zagros Mountains.

The Zagros Mountains are a long mountain range in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey. The mountains are a natural barrier and have provided the boundary between cultural and political entities for thousands of years, including the early Mesopotamian and Median cultures, the Parthian and Roman empires, and, more recently, the Persian and Ottoman empires.

The Zagros Mountains are a formidable fortress at the heart of Iranian Plateau. During the time of the Medes, while the Assyrians were constantly marching in their land, the Zagros mountains served as a barrier between them and the Medes.

Even when the Assyrians entered the land of the Medes, during their invasion, most of the inhabitants of the villages abandoned their homes and took their livestock to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains, and the enemy did not succeed to harm them. And of course, perhaps one of the reasons why the Medes resisted and rebelled against the Assyrians more than other tribes is the existence of these impassable mountains.

To give the whole affair a historical framework, we are talking here about the time of the Akkadian Empire. The Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC, following the conquests by its founder Sargon of Akkad also known as Sargon the Great.

For students of military history, I recommend a visit to the Louvre in Paris. Here you will find a special stone testimony to the great importance of successful mountain warfare, the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin.

The Victory Stele of Naram-Sin is a stele that dates to approximately 2254–2218 BC, the time of the Akkadian Empire, and is now at the Louvre in Paris. The relief is carved in pinkish sandstone, with cuneiform writings in Akkadian and Elamite. It depicts the King Naram-Sin of Akkad leading the Akkadian army to victory over the Lullubi, a mountain people from the Zagros Mountains.

So, to get back to our topic: How long has mountain warfare been practiced? The answer is: since the beginning of human history.