Northstar1989 t1_ix6lrbg wrote
Reply to comment by imperialus81 in what was the population of ancient Mesopotamia? by Omastnar
>Now, man cannot live on bread alone. Especially if you want them fit to fight. An oz of red meat has about 75 calories.
You're completely wrong.
Armies on the march DIDN'T eat any substantial amount of meat in ancient times.
Most armies existed on an almost entirely grain-based diet as late as the Roman Empire. Legionaries famously ate a sort of porridge for most meals on campaign, and were punished by being fed lower quality or less desirable grains (such as barley rather than wheat) if they did something wrong.
Meat is a modern luxury. It's not something armies could afford to travel with large quantities of.
Your other assumptions are ridiculously far off too. The total army of a nation would almost never be deployed all in one place (it simply wasn't logistically feasible, as you deduced). So, maybe half the Army would be defending dozens of cities in the homelamd as holding forces, and the other half would be spread into 3 or 4 large fighting forces and one to two dozen smaller skirmishing forces along the border with a foe.
The larger armies would only gather together right before a battle. The Romans even had a maxim for this: "March divided, fight concentrated."
imperialus81 t1_ix6nmo0 wrote
I picked on red meat as a straight forward protein source that every ancient society would have at least had access to. It's also why I counted 2200 of their 2500 calories as coming from bread.
Were there other options? Sure. Beans and other legumes would fit the bill and would have likely played a significant role but beans also would have needed more water, which would have further complicated things. Plus, not every society would have had access to the same sorts of legumes so in the spirit of keeping it simple I put the number at 4oz of meat since going into more detail than that is just going to get too situational. As a note Tacitus does speak briefly as to the meat requirements of a Roman legion numbering it at around 150 swine/day for a full legion of 6000 troops plus their supporting folks. Now he was speaking about a legion in garrison, not on the march and we have no idea if it was some super special 'Legate Picard Day' or something but the point remains, that's a hell of a lot of food.
I also left out fat requirements since the Romans solved this through olive oil but I have no frigging clue how the Assyrians or Egyptians would have done the same outside of imports.
Northstar1989 t1_ixbr6xm wrote
Tacitus was a late Imperial historian writing in a period of relative peace, and known to be subject to exaggeration and outright flattery at times to ingratiate himself with the powerful.
That being said, he was most definitely talking about garrison troops. Legions did occasionally travel with substantial swine herds to eat, but nowhere near the scale of 1 hog per day per 40 men. A figure of around 1 hog per day per 250 men might be more accurate for an army on a prolonged campaign.
Note that few legions in Tacitus' day actually went on such long campaigns. The legions were generally fairly sedentary at the time, only marching relatively short distances to deal with border incursions.
The Dacian Wars towards the end of Tacitus' life were one major exception to this rule: and although the legions were exceptionally well supplied during them as Dacia was quite close to major Greek and Illaryian holdings of Rome (and connected to them by navigable rivers), you'll likely find that meat consumption for the actively canpaigning legions even then fell substantially below this figure of 1 per 60 if you look into any reliable statistics available for the wars.
Szwedo t1_ix6v1hw wrote
Weren't humans smaller back then too so they needed less calories, let alone meat protein being far less consumed in general up until the 20th c?
imperialus81 t1_ix6xevy wrote
Right, which is why I went for 2500 calories. For reference, a modern MRE averages at 1250 calories per meal, or 3750 calories per day.
Thuis001 t1_ix7dft9 wrote
Soldiers would also need to eat far more calories to stay in fighting shape as they expend more energy than your average person.
Szwedo t1_ix7dsa0 wrote
Armies back in this time were barely professional
Thuis001 t1_ix7n4li wrote
That has no bearing on how many calories an individual needs though. Just on how capable an army would be at ensuring the soldier has access to those.
imperialus81 t1_ix816ic wrote
You'd be surprised.
We do for example have records of what 'in theory' Napoleon was giving his troops in the early 19th century and it isn't far off the numbers I listed. This is the 'ideal' situation, not when they were marching home from Moscow:
24 oz of bread, 8 oz of meat, 2oz legumes.
My own numbers were more bread focused with less meat, but on that note you saw how pissy some folks got when I suggested half that quantity of meat upthread.
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