The chariot
Spoked wheels and a light frame turn the horse into a weapons platform.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 200 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Burials of the Sintashta culture in the southern Urals around 2000 BCE contain the earliest known chariots — light two-wheeled vehicles with spoked wheels, buried with paired horses. Spoked wheels are a substantial engineering advance over solid discs, and the vehicle is fast and manoeuvrable enough to carry an archer into battle. Within a few centuries the chariot is the prestige weapon from Egypt to China, and it dominates warfare for the rest of the Bronze Age.