>There were more wars before any type of mechanisation of warfare

yes but they weren't comparable. With the exception of ancient Chinese wars which are a bit of an odd case given the population sizes and that they kept sending farmers to the front until everyone starved, European pre-modern wars consisted of small armies and relatively low civilian casualty ratios.

It's this and the late 20th century that saw civilian death ratios climb up to 80-90% in mass bombing campaigns and urban warfare environments. People like to use 'medieval' as an insult but the medieval age was quite constrained compared to Gaza. And if you take the pilots out of the equation and fully automate this, that's probably only a taste of what people will do to civilian populations.

Because a picture says more than words, this is the kind of thing you can probably look forward to:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G_63OmTawAABeIg.jpg?name=orig