It can never be proved, but it is a safe assumption that the first time five thousand ma

le human beings were ever gathered together in one place, they belonged to an army. That event probably occurred around 7000 BC, and it is an equally unsafe bet that the first truly【M1】______ large-scale slaughter of the people in human history happened very soon afterward. The first army almost certainly carried weapons no different from those hunters had been using on animals and on each other for【M2】______ thousands of years previously—spears, axes, bows and arrows. Its strength did not lie on mere numbers; what made it an army was【M3】______ discipline and organization. This multitude of men obeyed a single commander and killed their enemies to achieve his goals. It was the【M4】______ most awe concentration of power the human world had ever seen,【M5】______ and nothing besides another army could hope to resist it.【M6】______ The battle that occurred when two such armies fought has little【M7】______ in common with the clashes of primitive warfare. Thousands of men were crowded together in tight formations that moved on command and marched in step. Drill, practiced over many days and months until it became automatic, is that transformed these men from a mob of【M8】______ individual fighters into an army. And when the packed formations of well-drilled men had【M9】______ collided on the forgotten battlefields of earliest kingdoms, what【M10】______ happened was quite impersonal, though every man died his own death. It was not the traditional combat between individual warriors.

【M1】