Greg Stafford wrote:
>
> At 01:18 PM 4/9/2001 -0000, you wrote:
> >Transport of food and supplies in ancient times was always the
> >greatest expense of any organized force. Most campaigns were
> conducted
> >in close proximity to a decent port or navigable river. Oxcarts have
>
> >a problem y'see -- if you're travelling more than 150 miles by
> oxcart,
> >you need another oxcart to provide fodder for them (and, of course,
> >more oxcarts for those oxcarts and... so on. Oxen, unlike horses,
> >can't walk and chew cud at the same time.
>
> Recommendation: Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the
> Macedonian
> Army, by Donald W. Engels.
Excellent book! I'd also suggest reading Xenophon's 10,000. A good manual for living off the land and trying hard not to die in a hostile land written in the 5th(?) century BC. Possibly one of the first tactical manuals (Sun Tzu's more strategy). Poor Xenophon and his 10 000 mercenaries were stranded in Persia when the King of Kings decided they should die... He got most of his men home too.
> A droplet of the final analysis of this book:
> All animals that are used to carry food, equipment etc. have the same
> ratio
> of food required to weight carried to distance travelled.
> 80 pounds for humans for extended distance, eating 3 pounds of food.
> 250 pounds for "average pack animal," eating about 9 pounds
>
> Humans however end up being the best possible pack animals for one
> reason:
> we have predator physiques while all others have prey biology. Any
> pack
walk-run-walk...
> critter can be pushed over the edge of normal endurance, but when a
> horse
> or ox gets a sprain you might as well eat it. When people get a sprain
> they
> can rest for a while and recover.
Also, a human with a pack full of food is probably going to put up more of a fight defending it than an ox will. They just get really cranky about having to carry it.
A bit of information that General Marius demonstrated in the Second Century BC (okay, I LIKE Marius). Once the Roman armies got rid of the slow moving baggage trains and transported their supplies by Marius' Mules (the legionary), the Roman armies began to move with an incredible speed. They could manage a steady 30 miles a day compared to the other armies of the time making 10 or so.
Jeff
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