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I think a lot of people have this idea that ancient/medieval people liked war because they were barbaric while we don’t because we are civilized. While it is true that people used to shy away from death a lot less, it is also a bit more complicated and in some ways actually kinda the opposite: modern warfare is so senseless and deadly that it kinda turned humans off of war a lot.
Through all of pre-modern history, war was able to fill the need for one-upmenship and demonstrations of physical prowess young men had. It was one of the main ways how men asserted their place in society.
And here is what a lot of people may not know: war was a lot less deadly back then. It was often hand-to-hand combat that actually reflected skill and training. And even if you were hit, the chances of you surviving with just a scar were good (it is not easy to kill someone in one single blow with an edged metal weapon)
Meanwhile in modern warfare, you can be killed from miles away by a bullet or a bomb dropped via aircraft that you have zero chances to see coming or defend yourself from.
This is even refected in how medieval text mention effects simmilar to PTSD a lot more rarely than they seem to occur in modern soldier. While it may be due to less awareness, it is also likely that our brains are simply more prepared to cope with a more hands-on kind of fighting than the stress and often helplessness of modern war.
So yeah, we kinda let technology make us so freaking good at waging warfare that it can’t fill the role of being a test of training and skill to attain prestige that it once held.
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