What is the single most important piece of technology in this history of warfare?

Propaganda

A stick with a slightly heavier bit at one end

Dreadnought.

This before modern medicine the vast majority of casualties from any campaign came from disease.
For example, during the Crimean war the British lost 4700 KIA and died of wounds, and 16,300 dead from disease.

The spear

Everything else is just a modified spear, even bullets are just a fancy throwing spear.

Basically what im getting at is the moment humans realized they could penetrate other human bodies with an object rather than smashing them or biting them with their own body

Any technology that allowed one to move faster than usual, so:

Boats, Chariots, Horses (with stirrups), Trains, Planes, Automobiles

Mobility>Morale=Technology>Numbers

Most tragic yea, The entire world spent 2 world wars figuring out how to fight major nations in land wars and it all got invalidated instantly leaving everyone squabbling over satellite states and middle eastern oil, I'm not saying I want more world wars but nukes where a mistake

FPBP.
Without this, we would still be fighting with a few thousand strong armies.

overrated af. smoking or salting meat works just as good. just ask mongols.

>history of warfare
Projectiles

the memes jack

Footwear

Think about it, shoes, sandals, and boots have been and always will be a major part of a soldiers uniform, and are necessary if an army wants to be able to cross terrain that isn't grassy hills. Footwear is the greatest military advancement of all time.

yes a few thousand feet more velocity and not being engulfed in a giant fucking cloud every time you shoot is totally no biggie.

Irrigation.

Allowed a large, settled population that allowed everything else to happen.

...

But tales significantly more time than canning, nor can it be applied to vegetables and fruits.

Mongols brought extra horses to drink their milk and blood. Worked for them. Don't know if it would work for other people.

Other people don't have thousands of empty steppe to graze huge numbers of horses. Everyone ejse has to eat regular food and preserve it for winter.

>ctrl+f
>radio

You fucking losers.

Most important in history.

You have to look at the scale. WW1+WW2 doesn't mean much in the context of historical warfare.

Machinegun isn't even relevant compared to artillery. Nuke again relies on Artillery.
And siege tools generally has nothing in common with artillery, besides sapping can be compared to sabotage.

...

Rifling

Probably gunpowder.

Gunpowder enables much more effective siege engineering, and allows you to replace highly trained professional soldiers with large quantities of conscripts.

RADIO
LIVE TRANSMISSION

Some form of farming technology that began agriculture and thus history.

I'm going to say the boat. Boats added whole new fronts to wars. If your nation had a coast you'd divide your men into an army and a navy, always. And boats are great for moving people, weapons, and supplies too. And you can use the boat as a weapon, make it fight other boats!

Fire.

>ctrl+f
>penicillin

You fucking retards

This one is objectively correct. Any tool made of metal is superior to a stone tool

That is not a single piece of technology but rather a group.

Strong but has very limited impact in some areas.

I see your penicillin and rise you Quinine. Penicillin though very effective was far from the first antibiotic. It was big step forewords but not as big as you may think.

The horse.

Nukes. Not just the exploding devices themselves, but also ICBMs and the infrastructure for launching them. They brought in a new age of history, in which those states which possess such weapons in quantity can essentially destroy other states in less than 30 minutes.
IN LESS THAN 30 FUCKING MINUTES.

Ironworking
Bronze was important but you can do a fuckton more with iron.

Electronics. Targeting, navigation, and especially communication would never be the same again. Computerization is a revolution we are currently living through. But I suppose what you see as he most important tech depends on what you prioritze. For me, it's intel and battlefield awareness. Mobility is a close second.

god i remember that being my screensaver in like 2008

Printing press? Writing?

Tech is great and all but you need people to fight for your cause

Regardless, nothing changed war so significantly and so quickly as radio communication.

Repeating firearms,

Marked the death of the ancient tactic of fighting in close formations and cavalry.

Pic related, the first repeating firearm to see extensive service with any army.

Ceremonial burial

Probably The Radio.
The ability to communicate is a real big deciding factor of war, and really expanded the reach of war so being able to command from a distance and on many fronts became viable.

Language
The ability to communicate more than simple concepts is the precursor to all technology, and the concept of civilisation itself. All other technologies are made moot without standardised language

Might as well say breeding is the most important invention because unless we found out how to fuck we also couldn't make any civilization.

Breeding is a natural process and can't be considered a technology
Standardised language is a developed process

And how is communication not also a natural process when animals do it all the time? or are you insinuating that Language in itself is some kind of advanced form of a natural process that we had to come up with?

It's obviously penicillin and various other medical innovations.

It ensures half of your army doesn't fucking die before they've even reached the battlefield

Very few animals have specific sounds they are able to make to infer meaning to specific objects or events. The difference between them and humans is
>Humans were able to develop systems of communication shared by more than just the family or tribal unit
>Animal forms of communication are limited entirely to 'signals'. The advantage of the concept of language is that it allows humans to pass information onto other humans the knowledge to perform other tasks and communicate complex ideas, rather than simply signalling current events

The invention of curling your hand into a fist for more hitting power, also called a punch. It revolutionized warfare beyond simple chopping, slapping, and scratching and transformed it into split second power matches. Like going from fencing to kendo. The fist also allowed humans to hunt larger animals that could not be killed with karate chops, moving our diets from lizards and birds to big mammals like deer.
It also established the first hierarchy in humanity, before everyone was just smacking mindlessly and nobody really had an upper hand. Now with the power of the fist there was a clear distinction between the female punch and the male punch. There is now distinctions, and thus the concept of the individual is born.