Military History Encyclopedia Forum

[roo]

I came across a referance to Iman Wilkens theories regarding the (supposed) real setting for the Trojan war, the other day and as these things do it set me wondering about serveral things but mostly about charriots and there uses.
As far as I can see the earliest version we have depictions of are on the Battle Stele of UR which shows a heavy 4 wheeled Mule/ass pulled vehicle from this depiction the passenger is armed with serveral javilins (though it is concievable they are very long arrows) this implies the charriot was not used as an impact weapon but to allow the crew to dash (Mules?) into javelin range and the withdraw.
The Egyptian variety is much lighter with two (spoked) wheels and pulled by horses with the crews weapon being the Bow. I have not seen any depiction of the Hittite charriot (they where contempory) but it would appear to have had a 5 men crew! so possible this might have been an impact weapon.
The Celtic charriot would appear to have been more a battlefield taxi then any thing else and I would have thought the use of blades on the wheels more of a danger to your own side than that of the enemy.
If anyone has thought on this please feel free to rubbish thye above or amend or add too.

[JohnRickardJR]

The blades on wheels were probably not at all effective. Like many aspects of Hellenistic warfare the visual effect seems to have been most important (I'm thinking of things like the massive thousand oar galleys that were barely mobile!

As far as I can tell, the chariot was nearly always a battlefield taxi or archer platform. The crew of the chariot are rather too far back to make a really good impact weapon. Mobility was the thing.

I've just looked up that Troy theory....

There is an increasing amount of evidence to place Troy exactly where everybody else puts it. Anyone who claims that the Illiad contains exact history should read the Odyssey.. Homer (or the tradition that became know as Homer) was a storyteller.

Not a lot of evidence for people migrating from north western Europe - most migration appears to be caused by presure from behind the people moving.
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[roo]

What brougth the subject of Charriots to mind, in referance to Wilkens theory was the terrain of Greece. The classical Greeks never developed decent cavalry because of it (can't count Alexander's has this was from the north, Thessaly etc. and the Geeks did not really accept them as Greeks) At GUAGAMALA the persians felt the need to clear the approaches to use there charriots at all and this is a terrian one would suppose was ideal for Charriots. How on earth would they have been of use in Greece proper where virtually all of it stands on edge,

[JohnRickardJR]

About as easily as they could have been used in the swampy countryside around Cambridgeshire...
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[Birchy]