The tower at Jericho is the world's earliest surviving fortification

The treasures found in the royal cemetery at Ur include a depiction of soldiers in copper helmets, armed with battleaxes

In Mesopotamia the new weapon is a light chariot, drawn by two horses

The Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III defeats his enemies at Megiddo, in history's first fully described battle and siege

The earliest known suit of armour, made of bronze, survives from a tomb in Mycenaean Greece

An indecisve battle between the Hittites and the Egyptians, at Kadesh, stabilizes the frontier between the two empires

Not for the first time, the city of Troy is destroyed - on this occasion probably by Mycenaean Greeks

Mycenae and other states of the Peloponnese are overwhelmed by invading Dorian Greeks

The Phoenicians develop the war galley, with a sharp battering ram in the bow

Samson is one of many Hebrew chieftains fighting the Philistines for possession of Canaan

The Israelites are defeated by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, with Saul and three of his sons dying during or after the battle

The nomadic fighters of the steppes, nimble on horseback and shooting arrows as they go, pioneer the techniques of cavalry warfare

Gindibu brings 1000 Arab warriors on camels to do battle at Karkar (the first known reference to Arabs as a distinct group)

The Assyrians develop the battering ram into a mobile and powerful siege engine

The Assyrian army makes good use of the new technology by which iron can be hardened into steel suitable for weapons

The Babylonians defeat an Egyptian army at Carchemish, but do not press on into Egypt

The hoplite - a Greek citizen, heavily armed in bronze and leather - proves a formidable fighting man

The phalanx, though not originally devised in Greece, is a devastating formation on the battlefield when composed of hoplites

The Greek city states pioneer the use of citizen armies, made up of free men who bring their own fighting equipment

Cyrus annexes the Greek territory of Ionia as part of his empire, giving Persia a presence on the Aegean

The 10,000 elite troops of the Persian empire, known as the Immortals, demonstrate the power of a professional standing army

The Greeks add a third bank of oars to their war galleys, turning the bireme into a trireme

The Greek cities of Ionia rebel against Persian rule, with the partial support of Athens

After six years the Persians recover control of Ionia, but Athens is now identified as a target for invasion

Darius sends a fleet across the Aegean, carrying a large army of infantry and cavalry for an attack on Athens