Renfrew and IE Overlords

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/24/00 3:43:27 PM Mountain Standard Time,
Stporfiri at cs.com writes:

>It seems to me that cavalry is important for breaking up the ranks; they
>seem to have had this value in most contexts, regardless of knives.

-- this is an extremely complex technical matter; but to oversimplify, before
the invention of stirrups (long after our period) the most effective cavalry
used missile weapons.  Shock action wasn't impossible, but it wasn't as
common or as effective as it became with the development of proper saddles
(Iron Age) and stirrups (post-300 CE).

Where chariots were extensively employed on the battlefield, they always seem
to have been primarily mobile missile platforms, usually for archers,
sometimes for spear-throwers -- this is certainly the case in the classic
Bronze Age chariot armies of the Near East, and for the contemporary users of
the Chariot in Iran, India and China.