Archeologists have found the oldest evidence of chemical warfare

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

History has no utterly complex mechanics of cause-and-effect whatsover. History is at best seen as unpredictable, foggy and not bound by any traditional laws applied to other sciences such as Mathematics. This is what makes it so beautiful: who, presuming that we send back a healthy percentage of pundits, speculators & the like to the past, would predict the rise of Mongol Civilization from the ashes or the decline of Rome? Or the Rise of the Sassanids? To me history is best left untried, unmeasured, and only studied as the facts presented themselves. Whatever conclusion or utility can we reach is a matter of debate, but I consider a fact that anyone who tries to metrify history into a strict delineation of certain restrict causes resulting in certain restrict events has no idea of what he talks. Else we could just accurately predict the future as much as we could "interpret" history, but no one knows if the US is going to be a thermonuclear wasteland in the next day.

EDIT - Sorry if I resurrected this old topic but this is an interesting debate nevertheless.