History of military logistics
Antiquity: The most basic requirements of an army are food and water. Neolithic armies were equipped with weapons used for hunting — spears, knives, axes and bows and arrows. By 1150 BCE the Olmecs of Mesoamerica were producing obsidian weapons that were neither hunting weapons nor agricultural tools. Early armies were small due to the practical difficulty of supplying large numbers of people, and their radius of action was likewise limited to 80 to 90 kilometres or so. A ruler or warlord might use an army to extract tax or tribute, but it required a formidable logistical exercise to employ it.

By 700 BCE, Assyria had developed a standing army, with iron replacing bronze in weapons and armour, and cavalry replacing chariots. The Assyrian army may have been able to field as many as 50,000 men, which alone would have required a high degree of logistical acumen, but could operate up to 500 kilometres from its bases. The defences and fortifications of cities had improved to the point where siege warfare had become a complicated technological task, involving scaling ladders, battering rams, siege towers and tunnelling, and could take months. Supply of a besieging force therefore required the transport or construction of special equipment as well as the provision of food and water.
Alexander the Great's father, Philip II of Macedon banned the use of carts on the grounds that they restricted the army's speed and mobility. Alexander continued this practice, with his army relying on horses and mules. He also used camels, many of which were captured along with Darius III's baggage train after the Battle of Issus. Although a cart drawn by a pair of oxen could carry up to 540 kilograms (1,200 lb), compared with about 110 kilograms (250 lb) for pack horses, mules and camels, they could only travel at 3.2 kilometres per hour (2 mph) and be worked for 5 hours per day, whereas pack horses could travel at  6.4 kilometres per hour (4 mph) and be worked for 8 hours per day. Carts were also liable to break down, especially in rough country. Some were necessary, however, for the carriage of heavy siege machinery.
In the imperial Roman army, each eight-man contuberium (squad) had a mule to carry the leather or goatskin tent large enough to accommodate the squad and a handmill to grind grain – as that part of the ration was issued unground – tools and cooking implements. Together with five days' rations, this weighed about 200 kilograms (440 lb), which was easily within the carrying capacity of eight men and a mule. Adding a second mule would allow the contuberium to carry an additional 11 to 13 days' rations. The Roman army ration included bread or biscuit, beef and veal, pork and sucking-pig, mutton and lamb, poutry, lentils, cheese, olive oil, wine or vinegar, and salt. This gave them about 3,400 calories (14,000 kJ) per day, which was similar to that of Alexander's men. An army of 60,000 required 95,000 litres (21,000 imp gal) of water for the men and 720,000 litres (158,000 imp gal) for the animals each day. Each contuberium had their own fire to cook their meals, so firewood had to be collected; Julius Caesar regarded a shortage of firewood to be as dangerous as one of water or fodder. The Olmecs used camales to prepare tortillas that could be retoasted and consumed en route, whereas the Maya lacked a good, transportable food, which made long-distance forays difficult.

The Romans constructed a network of roads to permit the rapid movement of wheeled vehicles. A road network was in existence in Italy as early as the third century BCE, and by the time of Diocletian the Roman Empire had 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) of roads. The Roman army had no specialised engineering units, and roads were normally built by local communities, but the army could and did construct roads, especially near the frontiers. Roads were not necessary for the movement of troops, since the soldiers and their pack animals could travel along unimproved dirt tracks, but roads were used by supply trains and a military mail system. The Chinese also built a road network, as did the Maurya Empire in India, the Persians in Asia Minor, and the Moche in South America.
However, it was less expensive to ship a tonne of grain from Egypt to Rome by sea than to move it 80 kilometres (50 mi) by road. The Romans preferred to use sea travel when they could, but it was risky as ships could be lost in storms. In his treatise on The Art of Commanding Armies, Polybius recommended that a commander have a thorough knowledge of how far ships could travel by day and night, and the optimal time and seasons for sea travel. Most ships were small. Six months' supply of grain for an army of 40,000 would have weighed 6,320 tonnes, and could have been carried in 200 ships.

Middle Ages: One of the most significant changes in military organisation in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century was the shift from a centrally organised army to a combination of military forces made up of local troops who often worked within the household during peace time and were provided food and drink from the high officials in the house. The magnates drew upon their own resources for their men, and during Charlemagne's reign and the reign of the Ottonian dynasty in Germany, some heads of house built permanent storages and dwellings to house men or supplies. Feudalism, under which a warrior nobility owed military obligations to their overlords, was a form of distributed military logistics system made necessary by poor communications and inadequate monetisation. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Ine of Wessex established a form of tax in kind known as the feorm, which allowed troops to be supported without cash purchases.

While on campaign, soldiers in the medieval period (the fifth to fifteenth centuries) in Europe were often responsible for supplying themselves, either through foraging, looting (more common during sieges), or purchases from markets along the campaign route. Even so, military commanders often provided their troops with food and supplies. This might be in lieu of wages if they worked within the king's household, but soldiers would be expected to pay for it from their wages if they did not, at cost or even with a profit.
Some early governments, such as the Carolingians in eighth century, required soldiers to supply their own food for three months, but would feed soldiers thereafter for free if the campaign or siege was ongoing. Later, during the Saxon revolt of 1077–1088, Saxon soldiers were required to bring supplies enough for the entire campaign. Some individual feats of logistics were formidable; after a  seven-week campaign English archers shot up to half a million arrows during the battle of Crécy in 1346.
Soldiers were often required to come equipped for campaign with their own armour, shields and weapons. They could often obtain the needed supplies from local craftsmen: smiths, carpenters, and leather workers often supplied the local militia troops with cooking utensils, bows and arrows, and horseshoes and saddles. Archaeologists have found evidence of goods production in excavations of royal houses, suggesting that the Roman infrastructure of central arms and equipment factories was inherited, even if such factories were more decentralised. Estates during Charlemagne's reign were required to have carpenters staffed to produce weapons and armour.
The Vikings focused on seizing sites like monasteries that had large stores of supplies such as grain, cheese, livestock,  beer and wine. They were also often located in the heart of agricultural areas with large surpluses stored in warehouses and granaries. This simplified pillaging and foraging. They were also filled with valuable objects, and housed wealthy persons who could be ransomed for substantial sums. However, they still had to take some supplies with them, and their longships were not suited to this, so they also brought merchant ships (knerrir) to carry supplies with them (and to take plunder back). They established bases where supplies could be stored, which allowed them to occasionally field substantial forces and carry out large-scale operations, such as in the Siege of Paris in 885–886.

The Mongols drank horses' blood and milk, and took with them other livestock such as sheep, goats, cattle and sometimes camels. Sheep were the most important of the herd animals, and butter and cheese was produced from their milk, although horse meat was a particular favourite. Livestock could be spared for slaughter only occasionally, but when it was, all parts of the animal were eaten, and the bones were saved to make broth. They supplemented their diet with wild game, and collected various wild vegetables, fruits, berries, fungi and edible seeds. They had collapsible tents that could be quickly erected and struck. They were capable of operating in winter, but depended on their horses, so they needed grasslands where the horses could graze.
Beasts of burden were used as vehicular transport for the food and supplies, either by carrying the supplies directly on their backs—the average medieval horse and mule could carry roughly 100 kilograms—or by pulling carts or wagons, depending on the weather conditions.