|
"Evolution
of Weaponry"
A
Brief Survey of Weapons Evolution
The
Chariot
The
chariot was introduced to ancient Egypt early in the Second
Millennium B.C., and subsequently it was to become the first
major, revolutionary weapons innovation. As a system it
was made possible by the domestication of the horse, the
invention of the wheel, and the invention of the bow and
arrow--particularly the recurve bow. The chariot was a two-wheeled
platform pulled by horses (usually two) generally carrying
a driver and a passenger. It was of limited value for commerce
due to its small cargo capacity and was primarily an instrument
of war. Its mobility gave it a high degree of utility in
attacking vulnerable flanks or in the pursuit of a defeated
enemy, and the passenger was usually an archer who would
fire from the platform while on the move or during brief
halts.
The ascendancy of the chariot for well over a millennium
has been called "inexplicable" by some historians, but an
understanding of the chariot's powerful psychological contribution
makes its role clear. The chariot undoubtedly had many limitations:
the horses were very vulnerable to archers and slingers
and if just one horse was disabled the whole chariot was
out of action, and the absence of a horse collar meant that
the mounting system choked the horse, thus making the chariot's
effective range a fraction of that of the cavalry, which
would later replace the chariot in its mobility role. And
yet, in spite of these limitations, the mobility advantage
of the chariot (useful primarily in the pursuit, when most
of the killing occurred) combined with some group processes
(driver plus archer) and some distance processes (archer
firing from a mobile platform) made the chariot the dominant
weapon of an era ranging from the Egyptian to the Persian
Empires. Ultimately it would be defeated by the phalanx
and replaced by cavalry.
|
|
|
|
Read
a different article:
|
© 1999 by Academic Press. All rights of reproduction
in any form reserved.
|
