"A unique, multiauthored social history of war from the third millennium B.C.E. to the tenth century C.E. in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Europe (Egypt, Achaemenid Persia, Greece, the Hellenistic world, the Roman, Republic and Empire, the Byzantine Empire the early Islamic world, and early medieval Europe), with parallel studies of Mesoamerica (the Maya and Aztecs) and East Asia (China, Japan)."--BOOK JACKET.