Generally rectangular with various degrees of rounding at the front, somewhat greater expanse at the back, and slight distortions in one or another corner, these ancient compartments always emphasized width over depth. Shang chariots averaged about 138 by 96 centimeters,
30
with the vast majority being roughly 130 to 145 centimeters wide, but chariots as small as 94 by 75 (at Ta-ssu-k’ung-ts’un) and as large as 150 by 90 and 170 by 110 (at Kuo-chia-chuang) have been recovered.
In the Western Chou and thereafter the compartment size, particularly the depth, would increase somewhat—perhaps to better accommodate the fighters and allow them to wield longer weapons—but remained considerably smaller than the maximum allowed by the separation of the wheels, including the inner portion of the two hubs. However, irrespective of size, until late in the Warring States the only opening for mounting the chariot was a narrow gap of 25 to 40 centimeters at the back, much in contrast to fully open Western-style backs.
31
The minimalist frame was constructed from narrow, generally 4-to 6-centimeter poles of rattan, hard cane, wood, or even bamboo, with those framing the bottom being slightly thicker than the 8 to 12 posts employed to erect the walls.
32
The rod forming the top edge of the side wall generally ran horizontally at a maximum height of 45 to 50 centimeters (and thus below the rim of the wheel), though two variants as low as 22 and 30 centimeters have been excavated.
33
(The
K’ao-kung Chi
diagram showing high side walls is simply inapplicable to Shang or later
war chariots.) However, the walls were not always uniformly high all around the compartment, because several recovered so far show a tendency to be slightly lower in the front and higher to the rear. For example, at Mei-yüan-chuang the front of the southern chariot in M40 was 39 centimeters high, but the back rail about 50, while the northern chariot is about 30 centimeters in the front and about 40 in the rear.
34
A crossbar or rail that protruded above the side walls to provide a handhold was occasionally added near the front of the compartment.
35
Fabricated from interlaced material, the compartment’s walls would have provided a limited amount of protection against arrows and may even have deterred spear thrusts, depending on the thickness and hardness of the reeds or bamboo. Despite leather being employed for body armor in the Shang and subsequently adopted for chariots in the Spring and Autumn when four horses were commonly harnessed, there is no indication it ever augmented the walls of Shang chariots.
36
(The horses were similarly unprotected by any form of leather armor.) Nevertheless, many chariots presumably intended for transport or martial display were apparently lacquered in red and black and had various marks of insignia or bronze plaques affixed.
37
However, assuming that tombs with accompanying weapons demark a military chariot, little differentiation is seen in the Shang other than such embellishments and perhaps being slightly smaller.
38
Apart from rare exceptions such as the chariot in M41 at Mei-yüan-chuang, the chariot compartment was normally centered or symmetrically placed over the axle, thereby minimizing the downward load borne by the horses’ necks.
39
The frame initially rested directly on the axle and the shaft at four contact points; a somewhat bowed wooden cushioning mount called a “crouching rabbit” (
fu t’u
) may have come to be employed at the end of the era.
40
Leather lashings further secured the compartment frame to the axle and shaft, with another mount sometimes having been employed just over the joint of the shaft and axle.
The shaft always overlay the axle, with both being slotted or in-cut to create a tight joint and present a relatively flat profile across the axle’s entire length under the compartment frame.
41
It was originally thought that Shang dynasty chariots employed relatively straight shafts, but advances in reconstructive technology have revealed that they curved upward
at various points forward of the chariot compartment, a necessity for the chariot compartment to be level. (Rather than a gradual bend, the curvature seems to have become more radical and pronounced over time, with some chariots simply having a nearly perpendicular upturn at the very end for affixing the crossbar.)
Typical dimensions for two shafts found at Mei-yüan-chuang that date to the third or fourth period of Yin-hsü (and whose chariots show many features previously identified as Chou inceptions) are 280 centimeters for the actual length but only 250 centimeters from the back end to the front tip as measured horizontally, and 265 and 227 centimeters, marked by a 108-degree angle,
42
but only 268 and 261 at Kuo-chia-chuang. The final portion of the shaft at the front also tended to include another curve that placed the tip above the crossbar and well displayed the decorative bronze caps that were employed to embellish both ends. The round to somewhat oval shafts average 15 centimeters in thickness, but taper under the caps.
The two horses were harnessed to the chariot by means of bronze wishbone-shaped yokes suspended from a crosspiece. Rather than directly attached to the shaft, the crosspiece was apparently connected to it with leather straps that could be adjusted for the height of the horses, thereby ensuring that the chariot would not be tilted upward while coincidentally reducing the stiffness of maneuver in lateral and turning motion.
43
Tomb vestiges indicate intervals above the crosspiece from 20 to as high as 40 centimeters, while the crosspieces themselves averaged 110 to 120 centimeters for straight versions and 220 for significantly curved ones, with diameters of 7 to 10 centimeters at the middle but somewhat tapered at the ends, where decorative bronze caps were again attached.
Although claims have long been made that any form of harness that extended down from the upward curved shaft—the so-called throat and girth harness—would have constricted the horses’ necks and proved counterproductive under load, the actual method remains uncertain.
44
However, chariots were obviously used with regularity, indicating that this was either not a problem or somehow surmounted. Prior to the inception of Warring States improvements that resolved any residual problems, the bronze yokes suspended from the crossbar would have allowed the use of some sort of chest piece that could have been held
in place by lateral lines from the chariot or some sort of girth strapping that transferred the load away from the horses’ throats, the latter being made possible by the height of the wheels coupled with the compactness of the horses.
45
As would be expected for an imported system, even though improvements would continue into the Spring and Autumn period, the bridle, bit, forehead and nose straps, cheek pieces, and reins—the very basis of control—were all essentially complete and functional in the Shang.
46
In the West a variety of materials were employed for the bit, including wood, leather, shell, and metal, and even though the metal bit reportedly did not attain mature form or proliferate until the Spring and Autumn, leather bits were already being displaced by bronze versions by the end of the Shang.
47
For two horses a simple rein system was adequate, but adding an outer pair not directly yoked to the shaft increased the complexity and resulted in the driver holding six lines, a task somewhat facilitated by employing a bronze tube and a so-called bow-shaped bronze fitting affixed to the front of the chariot. Bronze rings and crosspieces were also employed wherever the head ropes, bridle, and reins interconnected, as well as for the harness joints. Various decorative bronze pieces were added to the leather surfaces and a sort of bronze disk sometimes fixed so it would lie just on a horse’s forehead.
Chariots often seem simple, obvious, and mundane in an age accustomed to the complexity of electronic systems and innumerable vehicles. However, wheeled transport required centuries to evolve from the sledges that were generally employed in the West from 7,000 to 4,000 BCE to shift limited amounts of materials in bulk and continued to be used in isolated locations well into the third millennium BCE.
48
The first wagons, generally pulled by slow but powerful oxen, were lumbering, four-wheeled behemoths assembled from rough-hewn logs that relied on solid wheels cut from thick tree trunks. The chariot, a two-wheeled vehicle intended solely for war, eventually evolved but only became truly formidable with the invention of the spoked wheel, fabrication of lightweight compartments, discovery of lubrication methods, mastery of
the horse for swiftness, and development of bronze tools capable of more precise woodworking.
49
When coupled with archery, lightweight chariots provided the ultimate military weapon for clashes throughout the Near East starting about 2000 BCE and continuing to 1000 BCE, when the infantry suddenly gained the ascendancy, but China began massively employing them.
50
In recent decades the origin of the chariots that suddenly appeared in China during King Wu Ting’s reign has been the subject of acrimonious debate between those who proclaim the Chinese chariot to be the fruition of purely indigenous developments and opponents who stress the essential continuity of imported design.
51
Previously, the most commonly accepted scenario envisioned the chariot as having been introduced around the fourteenth or thirteenth century BCE through Central Asia, having originated in the Near East. Furthermore, it was believed that the transmission route had been quickly severed because Chinese vehicles displayed unique characteristics but failed to incorporate subsequent Western developments.
52
However, a radically different historical sequence based on new findings and changing interpretations of archaeological data has recently been proposed.
53
Without getting mired in thorny arguments over the horse’s origins or the history of wheeled vehicles, two topics closely entangled with theories about the inception and diffusion of proto-Indo-European, certain discoveries pertinent to the nature of Western precursors should be briefly noted. The crucial developments were the displacement of heavy four-wheeled wagons by lightweight chariots and the domestication of the horse, understood here as the ability to breed the animals in a relatively controlled environment coupled with the knowledge necessary to control them in harness or under mount.
According to one well-argued view, the horse that eventually evolved from among several “horselike” animals primarily emerged in the Pontic-Caspian steppe between the Caucasus and Ural mountains by about 4800 BCE, where it was hunted as a food source.
54
At some stage, possibly 4200-4000 BCE but certainly 3700-3500 as attested by bits found at Botai in north Kazakhstan, the ability to mount and ride a horse, highly useful for controlling even the small numbers being raised for food, reportedly developed, immediately making possible not just
previously unimaginable rapid movement but also journeys over a far greater range.
55
Although cavalry contingents would not appear until about 1500 BCE and perhaps only developed as an effective force with the acquisition of the compound reflex bow around 1000 BCE, mounted raiding commenced, dramatically changing the nature of conflict.
56
The first wheeled vehicles, replacements for the sledges that initially facilitated the transport of moderate loads over limited distances, reportedly appeared sometime between 4000 and 3500 BCE. Wherever they were invented, early forms of four-wheeled wagons dating to 3400-3000 BCE have been found in Mesopotamia, Poland, Germany, and Hungary. Thereafter they rapidly spread in every direction, including out onto the Ukrainian and Russian steppe lands, about 3300-3100 BCE.
57
Meanwhile improvements that occurred in spurts and had highly localized manifestations over the millennium between 3500 and 2500 BCE emphasized making the vehicle more maneuverable and lighter, such as by reducing the weight of the body and adopting tripartite wheels. The next significant stage, their evolution into chariots around 2100 to 1800 BCE, seems to have occurred not in the Near East but in the northern steppes east of the Ural Mountains in settlements identified with the Sintashta culture.
Apart from being heavily fortified with walls and ditches, the approximately twenty sites already found between the upper Ural and upper Tobol rivers were heavily oriented to metallurgical production, primarily from arsenical bronze. Whether they flourished because their casting technology made the aggressive exploitation of weapons possible or simply found themselves immersed in a warlike environment and responded by fabricating weapons, they also developed the first real chariots. Although relatively narrow, with a wheel gauge of around 1.2 meters and axle lengths of 2 meters, being powered by two horses they could easily carry one or two riders into battle.
58
In comparison with chariots from the Near East and Mycenae dating to about 1850 BCE, whose wheels average 75 to 100 centimeters, those from Sintashta are noticeably larger, reportedly 90 to 120 centimeters in diameter.
59
They also had far more spokes, generally 8 to 12 rather than 4 to 8, curved shafts, compartment-centered axles, and cheek pieces.
Somewhat farther to the east the Petrova culture, which flourished from 1900 to 1750 BCE, directly inherited Sintashta’s defining aspects, including their focus on metallurgical production (but in tin bronze alloys),
use of fortifications, and exploitation of the chariot, prompting scholars to speak of a combined Sintashta-Petrova culture. From here the chariot could have been transmitted as far as the Altai Mountains through the Srobnaya and Andronovo cultures, the latter similarly a tin bronze producer, in the century between 1900 and 1800 BCE. Thereafter it appears to have been another six centuries before the chariot was adopted by the Shang, despite the probable introduction of horses into the precursor Ch’i-chia and Ssu-pa cultures in northwest China sometime between 2000 and 1600 BCE.
60
Meanwhile, the chariot had been spreading through Central Asia (including the area around Lake Sevan) into the Near East and down to India, where it eventually proliferated and assumed a vital role in the indigenous civilizations.