The Chariot – history’s first personal transport concept

As previously mentioned, warriors and kings were buried with their chariot. Sadly, burial also required the lives of the horses that drew the chariot, and the driver too. One wonders at the toll of humans we have squandered through sacrifice over the ages. Getting back to the point though, the adulation humanity has lavished on the automobile in the 20th century clearly has some precedents. The chariot was a gift from the gods

The strength of an army was measured in bodies and chariots. In the Bible, the number of chariots is used numerous times to quantify “power” - Jabin, the king of Canaan, had 900 chariots (Judges 4:3), and the mighty King Saul commanded no less than 30,000 Philistine chariots. Solomon had 1,400 chariots (1 Kings 10:26) and chariot cities were established to store war chariots during peace time (2 Chronicles 1:14). Many were stored in Jerusalem.

As power could be demonstrated by amassing chariots, some impressive collections grew. By the 15th century BC, Pharaoh Tutmoses III had over a thousand chariots at his disposal; by 1400 BC the Great King of the Mitanni had amassed several times that number.

Despite being the vehicle of such notable civilizations as the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, the largest chariot fleet in history most likely belonged to the Chinese who had a standing army of 10,000 chariots before the cross-bow outranged the composite longbow, making chariots instantaneously obsolete around 500 BC. The Chinese even experimented with large cross-bows mounted on chariots but eventually recognized that the age of cavalry had arrived as horses had evolved and were now sufficiently strong enough to carry an armored human.

One particularly fearsome version of the chariot, the scythed chariot, where blades extend horizontally from the axle of the chariot. Introduced by the Persians as a response to fighting against the tight phalanx formations of the Greek heavy infantry sometime between 467 BC and 458 BC, the scythed chariot was pulled by a team of four horses and manned by a crew of up to three men - one driver and two warriors. Theoretically the scythed chariot would plow through infantry lines, cutting enemy combatants in half or at least opening gaps in the line which could be exploited.

The scythed chariot overcame may of the difficult in getting horses to charge into the phalanx formation of the Greek/Macedonian infantry. The scythed chariot avoided this inherent problem for cavalry, by the scythe cutting into the formation, even when the horses avoided the men. A disciplined army could diverge as the chariot approached, and then collapse quickly behind it, allowing the chariot to pass without causing many casualties. War chariots had limited military capabilities. They were strictly an offensive weapon and were best suited against infantry in open flat country where the charioteers had room to maneuver. At a time when cavalry were without stirrups, and probably had neither spurs nor an effective saddle, though they certainly had saddle blankets, scythed chariots added weight to a cavalry attack on infantry.

Like most aspects of military technology which the Chinese turned their hand to, the chariot reached its technological peak under that country’s continuous application of the latest scientific discovery. The balance of the Chinese chariot was much better than its European equivalent, with the harnessing better designed to enable the horses to pull with their shoulders and achieve both greater speed and better manoeuvrability. Throughout recorded history, the Chinese military generally had a significant technological advantage over all of their contemporaries. We recently wrote about the remarkable Chinese war fleets of the Ming Dynasty here.

The chariot too was unquestionably the vehicle of the conqueror.

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