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Originally Posted by SeattleUte
Indy, it's patently false that it's easy to imagine an acient army could have hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
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The Mauryan army had multiple Aksauhini's. The standing army had three-quarter million troops, one of the largest armies in the world at the time.
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http://www.allempires.com/article/in..._ancient_india
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The expansion and defense of the empire was made possible by what appears to have been the largest standing army of its time[citation needed]. According to Megasthenes, the empire wielded a military of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 war elephants.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire
Also, southern Mexico, at the time of European arrival, had the highest population density in the world.
Moreover, even with modern knowledge, there are still disputes over the number of dead in wars, sometimes the disputed number is the hundreds of thousands! (i.e. Vietnam).