Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (15 page)
War chariots are complex, sophisticated machines, the successful use of which required four inseparable elements: the chariots themselves, highly trained domesticated horses, drivers, and archers. Because the earliest known chariot warriors were all Indo-Europeans, it seems highly probable that the drivers and warriors originated in Central Eurasia. Where then did the horses and chariots come from?
The horse is native to Central Eurasia. Although wild horses did roam as far south as Palestine in the Pleistocene epoch, they subsequently disappeared, evidently due to hunting. Przewalski’s horse, the wild horse of the Eastern Steppe north of the pre-Chinese cultural zone, is genetically distinct from domesticated horses, which were domesticated by about 2000
BC
, or in any case earlier than their first use as draft animals for chariots. They could therefore hardly have been domesticated in the ancient Near East, where horses only appear, or reappear, together with the chariot.
87
Also, horses were adopted by local rulers much later than their attested use by Hittites, Mitanni, and Mycenaeans—for example, in New Kingdom Egypt, where the chariot is a known importation from Mitanni.
88
Studies of the materials used in preserved Egyptian chariots confirm that the Egyptians imported them from the Transcaucasus area.
The fully formed war chariot is known from archaeology to have been introduced into previously vehicleless Shang China from the northwest no later than the twelfth century
BC
, and probably somewhat earlier, because the earliest examples found so far date to the thirteenth century and already have extensive local Shang decorative detail that presupposes a period of acculturation in China. The chariot was also used by foreign peoples in warfare with the Shang Chinese. The chariot horse must have come along with the chariot.
89
Domesticated horses were buried together with men and chariots in the Shang royal burial ground. The burial of chariots with their horses and charioteers is typical of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, which seems to have been exclusively Indo-European down to the end of the second millennium
BC
.
Domesticated horses may have appeared in Anatolia, and possibly in the Near East proper, by 2000
BC
—in which case the exporters necessarily were Central Eurasians—but they remained rare at best until the seventeenth century, when Indo-European chariot warriors, driving the perfected war chariot, seized control of preexisting cultures in Central Anatolia (the Hittites), Upper Mesopotamia (the
maryannu
of Mitanni), and the Greek Aegean (the Mycenaean Greeks). Most ancient Near Eastern words for ‘horse’ are borrowed from an Indo-Iranian language; in view of the early dates, well before the attested appearance of Iranians outside Central Eurasia, that language can only be Old Indic. Literary evidence from the non-Indo-European kingdoms of the ancient Near East also explicitly attests that horses long remained rare and expensive imports there and that the local people were unaccustomed to handling horses for any purpose other than athletic daredevil displays.
90
The earliest clear descriptions and portrayals of the chariot are of a machine used for shooting with the bow, not a vehicle for royal display. All hard evidence indicates that wherever it appeared it was a military weapon first and foremost, and only later did it come to be used for prestige activities such as parades.
91
This is also true for literary evidence. Even late references to chariots being used to transport warriors to battle, as in the
Iliad,
are warfare usages.
92
The chariot was undoubtedly also used from the beginning for hunting, perhaps because it was necessary to train the charioteers and their horses for battle, and to keep them in training. Hunting from chariots in a Central Eurasian context, particularly the
grande battue,
while it served the important purpose of gathering food, was conducted exactly the same as war.
93
But it seems that the ancient Central Eurasians did not distinguish clearly between an attack against enemy humans and an attack against animals.
The chariot’s primary use as a military weapon accounts for the heroic qualities attached to the chariot warriors, and vice versa. There would hardly have been anything particularly heroic about driving a parade vehicle. It is also difficult to imagine that a ruler would allow a pure symbol of rulership to be used by anyone not from the royal family, let alone common soldiers. Chariot racing must have developed as a natural outgrowth of chariot warriors training to use the chariots in battle, and also of exercising the horses to keep them in good condition and prepared for the distractions of the battlefield.
THE WAR CHARIOT
A very light two-wheeled wagon normally drawn by two horses and ridden by a driver and an archer, the chariot is the world’s first complex machine,
94
and at the same time the first technologically advanced weapon. A true chariot is so light that an empty one can be lifted with one hand, and its wheels are so delicate that the chariot cannot be left standing for long. It has to be placed on a raised axle-rest when not in use to avoid deformation of the rims, or else the wheels need to be removed and stored separately from the body. It cannot be used to haul anything heavy or bulky.
95
It can hold two men at most,
96
and can barely hold those two—in all cases one must be the driver, and in nearly all historical cases the other person was an archer. Chariots thus had no practical use other than warfare, hunting, and, eventually, parades.
The chariot was designed to go fast, to carry its occupants into battle at high speed, so it was intended to be used with horses, the only domesticated animals capable of pulling it at high speed. Because cavalry had not yet been invented, there was nothing more frightening to an enemy than to face warriors traveling faster than anyone could imagine while shooting a constant stream of deadly arrows as they passed. This made the chariot the super-weapon of the day.
By contrast, the earliest known vehicle, invented several thousand years previously, was incredibly heavy and slow. Its four wheels were made of solid wood sliced from tree trunks (evidently an artifact of the earlier use of solid tree trunks themselves as wheel-axle units). These wagons could only be pulled by teams of oxen, so they moved at a speed slower than that of walking cattle, which is slower than a human normally walks. The only thing such a vehicle was good for, practically speaking, was transporting heavy or bulky things, and that is exactly how such wagons continued to be used down to modern times.
97
Yet the fact that a human sat or stood on the wagon to direct its course suggested power. The wagon became a symbol of royal majesty, and kings paraded slowly and majestically past their people in fancy oxcarts. The other peoples of the ancient Near East and vicinity very quickly learned about the oxcart and copied it and its uses. The Proto-Indo-Europeans, with their plentiful cattle, were no exception. The royal oxcart remained a symbol of kingship throughout the Indo-European world into the Middle Ages. The chariot did not replace it in this function, although the heroic attributes of chariot warriors became attributes of rulers when they had to become warriors and fight from chariots to defend their thrones against foreign kings who used chariots in warfare.
The physical and linguistic evidence, as well as most of the circumstantial evidence, points to the late Indo-Europeans as the inventors or perfectors of the chariot. The earliest known true, practical, war chariots have been found in the area of Transcaucasia directly to the east of the lands of the Hittites and Mitanni, who were the earliest known users of chariots in war.
98
The Egyptians were still importing chariots from Transcaucasia even in the Late Bronze Age. It is highly unlikely that the chariot has a non-Indo-European origin in the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, but in any case the identity and location of the domesticators of the horse and the inventors of the chariot are not really significant. What matters is that Indo-European peoples were the first to use the combination, the war chariot, effectively in war. They appeared along with it in Greece, the ancient Near East, India, and China between the seventeenth and fifteenth centuries
BC
. Before Indo-Europeans are known to have appeared in the ancient Near East, there is no evidence that true horse-drawn chariots were used in war there or anywhere else.
THE CHARIOT WARRIORS
There is no reason to believe that any Indo-European speakers went anywhere out of their homeland in Central Eurasia before about 2000
BC
, and when the migrations began, they did not happen in isolation. Archaeology has shown that in every location in Eurasia where Indo-European daughter languages have come to be spoken, modern humans had already settled there long beforehand, with the sole exception of the Tarim Basin, the final destination of the people who are known to us as the Tokharians. Yet the Tokharians first migrated into the intervening regions, which were already inhabited by other peoples, before eventually moving on to the Tarim region. No known early Indo-European people thus expanded into a linguistic and cultural vacuum in Eurasia; each had to deal with preexisting local inhabitants.
No evidence has been found for a frontal assault invasion of any part of Eurasia by Indo-Europeans. The reason is that they undoubtedly did not accomplish their conquests that way. Yet they fought with their neighbors, as do all humans, whatever their culture. And in their conflicts with peripheral peoples, the Central Eurasians used a new weapon, the chariot, which until then had not been used in warfare.
99
The chariot was such a sophisticated, highly tuned machine, it was extremely expensive to build or buy, to train its horses and drivers, and to maintain. Its users had to be experts. Indo-European peoples of the second wave became the world’s first experts in the maintenance and use of chariots and chariot horses, and they were the first to use them successfully in war. The unfamiliarity of non-Indo-European peoples of the ancient Near East with domesticated horses,
100
let alone in connection with chariots, is well known from textual evidence of different kinds until long after the second-wave peoples had already used them in war all across the ancient Near East.
101
The ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, however, were highly organized, and many were literate; they did not take the Indo-European migrations into their territories lying down. Because they did not have chariots and the horses specially trained to pull them, or specially trained drivers to drive them and warriors who knew how to fight from them, at the beginning of this confrontation their only way of fighting against the Indo-European chariot warriors was to hire some of the same people to fight on their behalf against the other Indo-Europeans. The result of this practice was to prolong the Indo-European monopoly on expertise relating to horses and chariots. Although our primary evidence for the introduction of the chariot into China is archaeological,
102
it was undoubtedly accomplished in exactly the same way.
Eventually, the non-Indo-Europeans of the ancient Near East did acquire the skills involved in raising and training horses and in using chariots, if not in building them (the best-preserved Bronze Age chariot, from an Egyptian tomb, is constructed of materials from Transcaucasia, and was probably built there). The most detailed and best-preserved artistic depiction of the use of chariots in warfare is late, from an Egyptian wall relief celebrating Rameses II’s self-proclaimed defeat of the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh in Syria in 1274
BC
.
103
Yet it is certain that the Egyptians got the chariot, and learned how to use it, from non-Egyptians. Similarly, the Mesopotamians eventually overcame their fear of horses and chariots and adopted them for warfare, as attested by historical accounts as well as by later Assyrian wall reliefs and other artistic representations.
104
The chariot became obsolete—as a war machine—in the Near East when the Sea Peoples and others participating in the destruction that ended the Bronze Age learned how to use javelins thrown by running warriors to disable horses, chariots, and charioteers.
105
Nevertheless, the vehicles long continued to be used for racing, and even in warfare, though usually not as archery platforms but as prestige vehicles for generals, great warriors, and other leaders. Although they were eventually replaced more or less completely by horse riding, chariots continued to be used in places in Central Eurasia into late medieval times for rituals involving the imperial cultus, even in places where they had not been actually driven for many hundreds of years.
106
1
Text from
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rvsan/rv05056.htm
, book 5, hymn 56.
2
See
appendix A
.
3
See
appendix A
.
4
On the recently growing failure to understand this necessity, and the implications thereof, see endnote
30
.
5
See, for example, Lehmann (1993). Mallory and Adams give “4000
BC
” (2006: 106), but also “c. 4500–2500
BC
” (2006: 449). Both works discuss the influence of local non-Indo-European languages on the Indo-European languages. Lehmann’s (1993: 281–283) discussion of it actually supports the creolization theory, though it is not mentioned there and he elsewhere argues against it (see below). Mallory and Adams (2006: 463) cite the work of Johanna Nichols without discussion. Neither suggests creolization as the motivation for the formation of the daughter languages. Lehmann (1993: 263) implicitly argues against the idea: “Formerly, linguists and archaeologists ascribed change of dialects and languages to invasions of new peoples…. In time it became clear that in the fifth millennium [
BC
] tribal groups lacked the means and population to carry out such massive shifts.” On the creolization theory, see also Garrett (1999, 2006), Beckwith (2006a, 2007c), and
appendix A
.
6
Lehmann (1993: 266).
7
They proposed the end of the third millennium
BC
(Lehmann 1993: 266).
8
Mallory and Adams (1997: 297–299) discuss the main proposals.
9
See Garrett (2006) and Beckwith (2006a). On the important historical implications of dialects, sociolects, and other aspects of variation in language, see Lehmann (1973), Labov (1982), and subsequent work.
10
For discussion of other views, see Mallory (1989) and Mallory and Adams (1997, 2006). On the problem of Indo-Iranian, see endnote
31
and
appendix A
.
11
The middle Volga was already suggested as the homeland by Schrader in 1890 (Lehmann 1993: 279). Cf. endnote
32
.
12
Hock (1999a: 13); see also
appendix A
.
13
See
appendix A
and Beckwith (2006a, 2007c), and the studies in Mair (1998); cf. Barber (1999) and Mallory and Mair (2000). Much further scholarship is needed on the Tarim Basin discoveries, which are of revolutionary importance for the archaeology and history of both the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the Proto-Chinese.
14
See Hock (1999a: 12–13).
15
On the theory that Indo-Iranian underwent a formative stage under its influence, see endnote
33
.
16
See
appendix A
. If further morphophonological features (especially loanwords) that are specific to Group B are isolated, it might be possible to identify the alien language. Witzel (2003) discusses such loanwords in Indo-Iranian.
17
See
appendix A
.
18
On Avestan and the Indo-Iranian problem, see
appendix A
; cf. endnotes 31 and 33.
19
See the comments of Hock (1999a: 12–13).
20
We know only that the Iranians did split the Indic-speaking peoples into a western group, who migrated (or had already migrated) into the Near East, and a southeastern group, who migrated (or had already migrated) into India. Cf. Bryant (2001: 134). The Avestan texts could perhaps belong to this period of complex interaction between Indic and Iranian speakers; see
appendix A
. The *Aśvin or Wu-sun people of ancient Jungharia and vicinity might have been remnants of an eastern Indic group; see
appendix B
.
21
See
appendix A
.
22
According to the traditional view of the closeness of Old Indic (Vedic Sanskrit) and Avestan even after the Group B divergence, the formation and breakup of the group must have occurred in a very short time. This problem may be a chimera based on the mistaken understanding of Avestan; see
appendix A
. The very late attestation of the linguistically most archaic texts in Indic and Iranian is one of the many major problems of Indo-Iranian studies, a field in which too many facts do not fit the theories.
23
The other second-wave languages, which are attested somewhat later, are Italic (from the early first millennium
BC
), Germanic (late first millennium
BC
), and Armenian (early first millennium
AD
).
24
The Celtic and Iranian branches are attested in the first millennium
BC
, and Slavic by the middle of the first millennium
AD
, but Baltic and Albanian are only attested in the latter half of the second millennium
AD
. The development of Albanian is particularly obscure.
25
Cf. Bryant (2001: 134), q.v. on the “Indo-Aryan migration debate.” Most of the debate is founded upon the failure to understand linguistics and on political motivations having nothing to do with linguistics or history. On the scientific linguistic impossibility of the “indigenous Indo-Aryan” idea that is increasingly popular in India (Bryant 1999, 2001), see Hock (1999a).
26
Nichols (1997a, 1997b), Garrett (1999, 2006), Beckwith (2006a).
27
The Late Bronze Age peoples of the Western Steppe, including the Cimmerians, the predecessors of the Scythians, bred cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. Their emphasis on cattle as their main domestic animal continues the state of affairs believed to have existed under the Proto-Indo-Europeans. This distribution changed dramatically in the Early Iron Age, when the main animals raised by steppe peoples became sheep and horses, though pigs continued to be raised in the forest and forest steppe zones, and the domestic cat and the donkey were added to the assemblage (Rolle 1989: 100–101).
28
Mallory and Mair (2000: 138–139).
29
Chinese-area relatives of wheat, domesticated sheep, and domesticated horses are known from paleobiological study to have been introduced from the west not long after 2000
BC
. On the introduction of the domesticated horse, see endnote
34
.
30
See
appendix B
.
31
CAH
I.2: 833; cf.
EIEC
13. There are “a few Hittite words (for example,
i
šḫ
yuli,
‘obligation, contract’) in Assyrian texts from Kanesh (modern Kültepe) dating from the nineteenth century” (Bryce 2005: 13, 21 et seq.), which are believed to indicate that “Indo-European languages were already in the Central Anatolian area at the beginning of the second millennium” (Melchert 1995: 2152). Bryce (2005: 23) cites occurrences of “the names of house-owners with Anatolian names, like Peruwa, Galulu, Saktanuwa, Suppiahsu” in the Kanesh texts. However, they do not in fact indicate that Indo-European speakers were there
before
the nineteenth century
BC
. See also endnote
35
on the earliest attestation of Indo-Europeans.
32
Bryce (2005: 68).
33
EIEC
15. Their original name is unknown. On their name and their language as a creole, see endnote
36
.
34
CAH
1.2: 831. The other known Anatolian languages (principally Luwian, Palaic, Lydian, and Lycian) are all attested later than Hittite. Though some have argued that the names mentioned in early Assyrian texts were specifically Luwian, this appears not to be the case.
35
Drews (1988: 94).
36
See Bryce (2002: 21–23; cf. 2005: 109). On the similarity of Hittite and Scythian burial customs, see Rolle (1989: 34).
37
Further work by Hittitologists could perhaps clarify this issue.
38
Hittite does not seem to preserve the Proto-Indo-European words for ‘wagon’ and so forth, suggesting that the speakers acquired the chariot only after or during their immigration to Anatolia. Cf. Hock (1999a: 12). The real problem may be that we do not yet know enough about Hittite and the Hittites.
39
Drews (1993: 106; 2004: 49). The people of Troy VI, who are thought to have been Anatolian speakers, also used chariots. “The men who founded Troy VI introduced horses to northwestern Anatolia, and so long as the city endured (ca. 1700–1225
BC
) they used their horses not only to pull chariots but also to provide themselves with meat” (Drews 2004: 55). Because the consumption of horsemeat outside of Central Eurasia was extremely rare—it was virtually unknown in most of the ancient Near East—this suggests that the consumers came from Central Eurasia; cf. Drews (2004: 44).
40
Bryce (2005: 333–340), Drews (1993: 8–11), cf. Oren (2000).
41
Bryce (2005: 347–355). Other Anatolian peoples survived well into the Classical Graeco-Roman period, but nevertheless remain less well known than the Hittites.
42
Or Hattusa; now the village of Boğazköy (or Boğazkale), about 150 kilometers east of Ankara (formerly Angora, ancient Ancyra). See the map and photographs in Bryce (2005: 43, 45, 84), and Bryce (2002) for detailed coverage of the city itself.
43
Burney (2004: 204) says, “Much attention has been devoted to a non-Hurrian element in Mitanni, on linguistic evidence clearly Indo-Aryan. Highly influential as this group was, they were undoubtedly a small minority among their Hurrian subjects. They included, however, the royal house, whose names were all Indo-Aryan.” Rewriting his comments to remove the odd negative slant, this would read, “An important non-Hurrian element in Mitanni was on linguistic evidence clearly Indo-Aryan. Known as the
maryannu,
these people were highly influential and included the royal house, whose names were all Indo-Aryan.”
44
For the etymology of
marya
‘young (chariot-) warrior’,
marut
‘chariot warrior’, and their relatives, see endnote
37
.
45
Freu (2003).
46
Many of the leading men of Central Eurasian states, not only the rulers, typically had a comitatus. The Mitanni comitatus of chariot-warrior archers is the clear predecessor of the mounted-archer comitatus known from the first millennium
BC
onward.
47
Freu (2003: 19) notes, “tous les souverains ont porté des noms appartenant à l’onomastique védique, analysables par les seuls catégories du sanscrit.”
48
See the similar point made by Witzel (2001). There are also numerous other loanwords from Hurrian and other ancient Near Eastern languages.
49
See the discussion of this issue in Freu’s (2003) Mitanni history, which also gives extensive bibliographical references to the considerable literature on the Indic language of the Mitanni kings and chariot warriors and their relatives who left their names and scattered words all across the Levant in the second millennium
BC
. Cf.
EIEC
306. Like some scholars of ancient East Asia who ignore or downplay the evidence of early Indo-European intrusion, some scholars of the ancient Near East (e.g., Van de Mieroop 2004: 112–117) similarly attempt to bury this material.
50
As noted above, the name of the Wu-sun
*Aśvin of ancient Jungharia and the Ili River region suggests they may have been a remnant nation of Old Indic speakers in Central Eurasia. Their names and titles should be reexamined with a possible Indic linguistic connection in mind. See
appendix B
.
51
Freu (2003: 221–223); Van de Mieroop (2004: 121).
52
The Old Indic intrusion into India is widely believed to have happened after the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization of northwestern India suddenly collapsed in the first half of the second millennium
BC
, and the Vedas are now considered to have been codified in the area of Punjab. However, the controversy about the events in question has become more or less completely politicized, and most of what is written about it is unreliable at best. see endnote
38
for a brief discussion and references.
53
According to tradition the
Rig Veda
is the most ancient Old Indic text (or rather, collection of texts). It is not actually attested until around a millennium ago. See
appendix A
.
54
see endnote 37 on the Old Indic words
marya
and
marut,
and cf. Witzel (2001).