Chariot
Rodrigo Quijada Plubins
Definition
The chariot was a light vehicle, usually on two wheels, drawn by one or more horses, often
carrying two standing persons, a driver and a fighter using bow-and-arrow or javelins. The
chariot was the supreme military weapon in Eurasia roughly from 1700 BCE to 500 BCE but was also
used for hunting purposes and in sporting contests such as the Olympic Games and in the Roman
Circus Maximus.
Horses were not used for transport, ploughing, warfare or any other practical human activity
until quite late in history, and the chariot was the first such application. Donkeys and other
animals were preferred in early civilizations.
The Horse
The horse’s main ecological niche was the Eurasian steppe; a very wide (4,800 km) and narrow
(800 km on average) strip of grassland running roughly from Hungary to China, encompassing parts
of what today is Ukrania, southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Mongolia. For most of ancient history, the steppe - which means “wasteland” in
Russian - was the home of nomadic societies whose economy was based on herding, complemented by
hunting and, to a much lesser degree, sporadic, itinerant agriculture. No cities or settled
communities existed in the steppe, save a very few spots.
Steppe dwellers domesticated the horse for the purpose of breeding it for food like sheep and
other animals already domesticated. That process is unfortunately poorly understood, and it
occurred sometime before 2500 BCE. The wheel, an invention imported from the Middle East, had
arrived in the steppe around 3100 BCE. The invention of the chariot in the steppe - perhaps
originally meant as an improved tool for hunting - occurred roughly by 2000 BCE, probably in the
area just east of the southern Ural mountains, where the oldest chariots have been unearthed.
The word for horse appears just around this date for the first time in Mesopotamia, when an
increase in north-south trade through Iran is attested.
Invention of the Chariot
The chariot then became a moving platform from which soldiers could shoot at enemies. Arrows and
javelins were the main weapons used by the fighter on board, while a second person drove the
chariot. The tactic was to move constantly, in and out of the battle, shooting from a distance.
There is no clear explanation as to why humans invented the chariot first, before riding the
horse directly, which seems more straightforward to us. A chariot was obviously more expensive
than the horse alone, and chariots could not enter or properly manoeuver in landscapes where a
mounted horse can, such as hills, marshes or forests. We know people tried mounting horses very
early, as we have found drawings depicting it, but those seem rare experiments that did not seem
to work. The most common scholarly suggestion is that horses at that time were weaker than in
the present, unsuitable for supporting a man and only after a very long period of constant,
selective breeding, did a stronger horse come into being. Horses started consistently to be
mounted roughly a millennium and a half after the chariot was invented.
The “compound bow”, invented sometime during the second millennium BCE, was the final ingredient
for the rise of a deadly ensemble. Bow and arrow were much older, and the innovation of the
compound bow was the use of two types of materials, inside and outside the bow, which gave it
considerably more power. Compound bows were able to accurately hit a target 300 m away, and
penetrate an armour 100 m away. It was the preferred weapon of charioteers and later horseback
riding societies. Its power is reflected in the fact that these bows were last used in war as
recently as the 19th century CE by the Chinese, well into the age of firearms.
We have scarce knowledge of what happened with the communities in the steppe once the chariot
was invented. We can assume that war intensified - and some evidence about it does exist -, and
those who first or better grasped the new invention stormed their neighbours, sizing valuable
hunting and pasturing land rights. We truly understand the impact of the chariot only when this
new form of warfare came out of the steppes and into the settled, agricultural lands.
Charioteers & Warfare
The first reference to charioteers comes from Syria around 1800 BCE. Over the course of the next
four centuries, chariots advanced into civilization, either by direct migration of steppe people
or by diffusion, and it quickly came to be the preferred elite weapon.
(...)
Everywhere, in Europe, the Middle East, India, and China, all rulers, from petty chiefs to great
pharaohs, took the chariot as their master weapon. They started depicting themselves riding
chariots, waging wars in chariots, including chariots and horses in their tombs as symbols of
power, and so on. Their surrounding aristocracy, of course, followed suit, so the elite forces
in every polity came to be charioteers. The horse came to be a valuable military asset, no
longer a food source. Horse breeding became key for these states, and all powerful kings aspired
to have the proper stables to supply their armies with chariots; imports from the steppes,
though, long remained their major source.
The most famous chariot battle was that of Kadesh (1294 BCE), fought between the two superpowers
of the time, Egypt and Hatti (Hittites), where some 50 chariots are presumed to have
participated for each side. The small number of chariots compared to infantry troops is a good
indicator of how effective the chariot was: in China, the ratio was up to 25 infantry soldiers
per chariot.
Decline in Use
The use of the chariot declined very slowly, starting around 500 BCE (and yet, in some parts of
Europe the technology was just arriving at that time). First and probably foremost, because
horseback riding was developed in the steppes, and slowly but surely replaced the need for
chariots. The first known forces mounting horses were those of the Scythians, steppe people who
in the 7th century BCE attacked the Assyrian empire on horseback. Second, because infantry,
formerly helpless against chariots, became more sophisticated due to the expanding use of iron
weapons (from c. 1200 BCE onwards), and to new tactics in the form of phalanx formations.
Fighting the invading Romans, the Celts were probably the last people who used chariots
extensively, until around the 4th century CE.
VOCABULARY:
BCE – Before Common Era (or BC, Before Christ)
CE – Common Era (or AD, Anno Domini)
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