It’s like expecting people in the Stone Age to grok the Roman army by looking at it

You could also find precious gems and the like too. More or less anything found in the earth's crust was findable on the surface for a long period of time

On the topic of ancient metals, let's not forget Lucretius

>How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst
>Of thine own self divine. Man's ancient arms
>Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs-
>Breakage of forest trees- and flame and fire,
>As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron
>And copper discovered was

>Stone Age

Stone Age could be anything from sticks and rocks to a wooden macuahuitl sword edged in obsidian razor blades and an Inuit cordage backed whalebone bow that could kill a polar bear as easily as a Roman soldier.

Stone Age humans being invaded by the Roman army would be overwhelmed at first, but the Romans would still have to endure a few weeks of hit and run attacks by people who are expert hunters and who are comparatively much more hardened against the elements. Ancient humans were still humans - just as smart as modern people, only without the benefit of millenia of technological advancement behind them.

I'm thinking you underestimate the impression of thousands working in unison.

ha ha time for Borges

>Through an obscure geography of forests and marshes, the wars brought him to Italy from the banks of the Danube and the Elbe, and perhaps he did not know he was going south and perhaps he did not know he was fighting against the name of Rome. Perhaps he professed the Arrianist faith, which holds that the Son's glory is a reflection of the Holy Father's, but it is more congruous to imagine him a worshiper of the Earth, of Hertha, whose covered idol went from hut to hut in a cow-drawn cart, or of the gods of war and thunder, which were crude wooden figures wrapped in home-spun clothing and hung with coins and bracelets. He came from the inextricable forests of the boar and the bison; he was light-skinned, spirited, innocent, cruel, loyal to his captain and his tribe, but not to the universe.

>The wars bring him to Ravenna and there he sees something he has never seen before or has not seen fully. He sees the day and the cypresses and the marble. He sees a whole whose multiplicity is not that of disorder; he sees a city, an organism composed of statues, temples, gardens, rooms, amphitheatres, vases, columns, regular and open spaces. None of these fabrications (I know) impresses him as beautiful; he is touched by them as we now would be by a complex mechanism whose purpose we could not fathom but in whose design an immortal intelligence might be divined. Perhaps it is enough for him to see a single arch, with an incomprehensible inscription in eternal Roman letters. Suddenly he is blinded and renewed by this revelation, the City. He knows that in it he will be a dog, or a child, and that he will not even begin to understand it, but he also knows it is worth more than his gods and his sworn faith and all the marshes of Germany. Droctulft abandons his own and fights for Ravenna. He dies and on his grave they inscribe these words which he would not have understood.

Nice.
Kinda sad, but hopeful too.

>a wooden macuahuitl sword edged in obsidian razor blades

still doesn't matter when the opponent's got iron

>Barbarians in Ravenna suddenly postrate themselves when they see Roman decor
>Barbarians take over Ravenna
>Barbarians destroy the Roman Empire

Wow, you sure showed me

I think you misunderstand the point. Neolithic civilizations were still civilizations. They fought wars and organized cities and armed themselves with quite effective weapons.

Of course they'd still be cut down en masse because of the technological difference. But they'd recognize what an army is, and recognize shields & spears & javelins.
Though the OP also asked about cavemen, IE paleolithic or mesolithic.

Nigga eat your porridge, take your vitamins and read your goddamn Argentinian genius.

Very indirect attack route, stealing things at night, hiding during daytime, surprise attacks, use fire and arroyo tactics on mounted groups, keep the enemy off base and disadvantaged, no quarter no mercy warfare fight to the last man, attack in places where we have the advantage, my warfare against them would be extreme brutality night attacks that simply go on, and on, and on...

If on the other hand, they were seeking some form of trade, though the concept of formal business and crafts trade might be new to me, I'd be open to it, and if they really actually wanted a real peaceful coexistence, I'd be of course open to that too. Wise man make friend of gods, foolish man make enemy of them.

>I think you misunderstand the point. Neolithic civilizations were still civilizations. They fought wars and organized cities and armed themselves with quite effective weapons.

Far too many people make the mistake of equating certain inventions/materials with a certain amount of social complexity. You can have tribalism and engage in barter with guns and egalitarian democracy and complex economies with rocks.

>complex economies with rocks.

Special rocks?

Imagine what would happen to a roman camp if 1700 cave men armed with torches with tied-on grease pouches ran up and threw torches everywhere in the middle of the night, then just ran off and vanished into the woods. The stone age peoples could, if they mastered hit and run (likely since they used it on big animals), effectively fight the romans in an indirect warfare campaign. Romans would also always have to be watching their backs and sides, since a stone age hunter or warrior might pop up out of the wilderness at any given moment.

Unless the area is crucial to the roman hegemony, I see the romans eventually withdrawing to highly urbanized highly protected zones of the region, and being a limited influence in the stone age people's region.

If, on the other hand, the stone age people's region is crucial to the roman hegemony, they would probably either subject the stone age people to the decimatus regularly, just kill them all outright, or, form some kind of client king vassalage state.