Wheeled Vehicles.

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:37 AM 10/20/99 -0400, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>And that's merely the _latest_ date for it; a classic 'absence of evidence is
>not evidence of absence'.  Since it was already in a high state of
>development at that time and in that area, it's quite possible it was present
>in more rudimentary forms much earlier, and we simply haven't found the
>evidence yet (or it hasn't survived -- light wooden constructions generally
>don't).

Given its design, the chariot is a fairly direct derivation of the
two-wheeled cart, with modifications to make it more suitable for warfare
and.or racing.

In fact I find there is some ambiguity around the edges: when is a cart a
chariot?  A number of war carts in early depictions seem rather outside of
what I would normally consider chariots, yet they are often termed chariots
in the literature (e.g. relatively heavy four-wheeled war-carts)

>Horse domestication on the Eurasian steppe can be placed to around 4000 BCE,
>and equipment _very similar_ to that used in the early Ural-Kazakhstan
>chariots (Antler and bone cheekpieces, riding-crop caps, etc.) can be found
>from the Urals to
>Hungary very early -- earlier than the chariot burials.

Though some of these could be associated simply with riding horses.

>>The second is tools, at least copper tools, and for a really good cart
>>that makes judicious use of hardwood, probably bronze tools.

>-- no, I'm afraid this is not so.  Woodworking with Neolithic tools is
>perfectly satisfactory for hardwoods, as the evidence of the 'lake villages'
>and other neolitic settlements shows.  It's slower and more difficult, but
>you can get very much the same results.

For some purposed stone tools are actually *better* than bronze.  In fact
the main advantage of bronze is greater durability.  Stone blades are
*much* sharper than bronze blades - literally razor sharp.  So, in making a
cart one would simply go through lots of blades, instead of using one blade
throughout.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com