Humans have been digging holes for millennia

To actually answer your question: Because of advancing military technology. Bolt action rifles, Machine guns and artillery that can fire explosive shells faster then older artillery could fire solid shot meant that the individual soldier was more vulnerable then his predecessors ever were. Trenches were a reaction to this that arose spontaneously in many parts of the western front.

A person with a sword isn't going to do much good in a hole

Lmao, have you ever played Fortnite? The shovel isn’t for that, and it’s a pickaxe nigga

>humans have been digging holes for millennia
>have also been digging defensive ditches millenia

Look up the Battle of Dyrrachium in Caesar’s Commentaries, you dumb fuck

trenches are an example of defensive technology overtaking offensive ones
barbed wires,mines,improved breach loading,field howitzers,mortars,mass produced grenades,rifles all facilitated towards trench warfare
offensive operations needed 5 years to catch up to the level of industrial warfare seen which is quite fast
the most important improvement is on logistics because before that they are tied down to rail roads,then it was the improvement of smaller command units with things such as infantry squads,then it was infiltration tactics,creeping barrages,tanks and then combined arms assault

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you shouldn't be allowed to post on Veeky Forums

Autistic rage at its finest

stop

it's crop rotation all over again

Rome used trenches to control the battlefield. Caesar did it more than once. And by the Byzantine Era it was a common tactic. I forget which battle it was, but the Byzantines hired Huns for cavalry during the battle.

>why didn't this thing happen
>but it did happen
>hurr autismo
High quality post.

but the Western Front was just two gigantic counter sieges???

this.

I remember this, the Romans dug trenches and filled them with sharp sticks in front of infantry when they wanted to be defensive.

When the ottomans besieged vennia they realized they had less cannons than the defenders. They responded to this by digging trenches to cover their advance towards the walls

they still had ranged weapons (archers, javelins, slings, etc.)

you're a fucking retard user, just delete your post and kill yourself.
Also small wonder why they didn't. Mass use of holes in warfare proved to be a moronic and retarded idea in WW1.

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Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

what in the fuck are you into

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They have been digging for much longer than that. Tunnels have been dug to undermine enemy fortifications at least as long ago as Roman antiquity. Rapid-fire weapons (repeating rifles, machine guns, fast firing artillery, etc.) made them a necessary and common feature of warfare later on.

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It is widely known that the Germans getting bogged down in the battle of the Marne was one of the biggest tactical mistakes of WWI and rendered the schlieffen plan null.

Trenches are useful only in as much as you know the enemy cannot outflank you, WWI despite general misconceptions was a war of very high mobility for the time due to the utilization of railways. It was only the western front in northern France that had this static element to it, and that was mostly due to planes and air blimps being too primitive to bombard artillery positions.

>moronic and retarded idea
alright, I'll go back in time and tell the French to not dig any sort of fortification whatsoever, I'm sure the Germans won't just keep pushing through France! It's a good thing we have a military genius like yourself to win the war!