The passage above is an excerpt from a contemporary account of a Sumerian border conflict between Lagash and Umma that persisted roughly between 2500 and 2350 BCE. After the war described in the excerpt, the boundaries were redrawn by the winners only to be repeatedly contested by Umma, at least according to the Lagash version of events. Undoubtedly, this Lagash-Umma conflict was not the first territorial squabble between states but it is probably the first one on which we have some documentation. Since that time, states have multiplied, as have their borders, and so have their consequent disagreements about where those boundaries should be placed.

Some 4,350 years after the Lagash-Umma conflict, we have learned a number of things about the role of contested territory in the escalation of interstate conflict. For instance, there is little controversy that contested territory plays a central role in the escalation of force and the onset of war.