The Chariot – history’s first personal transport concept

The two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot was one of the most important inventions in history. It gave humanity its first concept of personal transport, and for two thousand years it was the key technology of war – for most of humanity’s recorded history, the number of chariots signified the strength of an army. It also became the world’s first mass spectator sport phenomenon and measured on a spectator per capita basis, achieved the most prodigious crowd-pulling feats of any sport in history. Remarkably, a set of chariot wheels from 2000BC is set to go under the auction hammer next month … read the remarkable history of the chariot.

The chariot has been one of the great enabling technologies of history. It came into being with the invention of the spoked wheel, which was largely enabled by the metallurgical advances of the bronze age, and it served as the primary means of transport for all civilizations from 2500BC until quite recently in historical terms. Until motorized transport came along 100 years ago, derivatives of the chariot were still very common.

The chariot also gave us the word for its replacement - the word “car” is a derivative of the word chariot, and the chariot was just as prized 2000 years ago as the automobile is today – when important people died, burial with one’s chariot was common.

In terms of personal transport, the era of the motorcar has lasted around 100 years so far. The era of the chariot lasted nearly 4000 years, with a history as rich and global as the automobile.

This map shows the spread of the chariot historically over time – it is worth a ponder – apart from providing an interesting information graphic on how the chariot developed internationally, it also shows how much slower technology was adopted 4000 years ago.

The chariot was absolutely ideal for the battlefield, but its advantage is not as most people think. Many popular historical films have portrayed the chariot as a type of brute force tank, used for crushing the infantry of the opposition. Indeed, the chariot rarely engaged in direct combat, though its waist-high semi-circular shield was very useful in giving protection from axe- and sword-wielding adversaries.

The chariot’s real strength on the battlefield was the raised firing platform it offered to archers – it was the original “artillery platform.” Archers mounted on a chariot were raised above the battlespace and could see what they were firing at. The chariot-mounted, highly mobile and highly accurate archer was both a tactical weapon and one which could offer devastatingly accurate and quite considerable firepower. It doesn’t take many archers to create an unrelenting stream of arrows to defeat or contain an infantry force. Many of histories most famous battles were conceded with greater numbers of soldiers but lesser numbers of chariots.

Accordingly, the chariot became the principle battle strength of every military force from the Egyptians all the way through time to the Romans. Its military value was negated through the invention of the crossbow – smaller and not requiring the stable platform demanded by the longbow, the crossbow also outranged the composite longbow.

In battle, the chariot offered a fast, manoeuvrable mobile platform for archers. It was also safer for the highly trained and hence much more valuable archers than being on foot, and it brought royalty into the contest where they could play a relatively safe and somewhat distant role in the battle with skills honed through the practice opportunities which being royal afforded them. Historically, the spoked wheel and the chariot seem to have sprung up in several places within a short period of time, with accurate carbon dating yet to give us a definitive reading on which civilization was the first to develop the chariot. It is most likely that the first true chariots were developed on the Eurasian steppes, along the now border of Russia and Kazakhstan, though shortly thereafter, they were popular on the plains of Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

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