This really is a nitpick and I don't mean to detract from your point in any way, nor from the horror of that war, but that war looks like it's quite a bit farther down the list from #3 in terms of death toll.
It's kind of shocking to take this list and sort it by number of deaths:
We're generally taught, at least implicitly, that the two World Wars were uniquely terrible. I'm assuming (and I certainly could be wrong, here) that this is the basis for your "3rd biggest" comment. But it's not really true. Even if you exclude long, ongoing events that aren't really single "wars", like the Mongol conquests, there are still some astonishingly deadly events farther in the past.
The An Lushan Rebellion is the one that amazes me the most, personally. It's one of the deadliest wars in history by absolute death toll, and since it happened so long ago (in the 8th century), that means it killed a huge portion of the world population at the time. The low estimates for deaths in that war amount to 5.5% of the population of the entire planet. The high estimate is over 15% of the world population.
And it's not the only one that rivals the World Wars. The Taiping Rebellion killed 20-100 million. And, well, you can see the list above. It's amazing how many of these things involve China. I mean, that's where all the people were, and thus the greatest potential for killing them, but even so it seems a bit excessive.
It's kind of shocking to take this list and sort it by number of deaths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_...
We're generally taught, at least implicitly, that the two World Wars were uniquely terrible. I'm assuming (and I certainly could be wrong, here) that this is the basis for your "3rd biggest" comment. But it's not really true. Even if you exclude long, ongoing events that aren't really single "wars", like the Mongol conquests, there are still some astonishingly deadly events farther in the past.
The An Lushan Rebellion is the one that amazes me the most, personally. It's one of the deadliest wars in history by absolute death toll, and since it happened so long ago (in the 8th century), that means it killed a huge portion of the world population at the time. The low estimates for deaths in that war amount to 5.5% of the population of the entire planet. The high estimate is over 15% of the world population.
And it's not the only one that rivals the World Wars. The Taiping Rebellion killed 20-100 million. And, well, you can see the list above. It's amazing how many of these things involve China. I mean, that's where all the people were, and thus the greatest potential for killing them, but even so it seems a bit excessive.