From Chariot to Tank, the Astounding Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine

2005, Overlook Press, Woodstock & NY, 344 pages

I was just re-reading the European entry for Chariot, which was one of my primary sources for the background for Gods of Boxing.

Note: Mister Cotterell’s work is cited in the free Broken Dance sample available when you click on our listing on the Ancient Combat page.

The study of the chariot is key to the study of Indo-European history and mythology. Also, in studying the transformative Bronze Age stage in China, India, Egypt and Mesopotamia, one must not overlook the introduction of the chariot. Even the island cultures of Bronze Age Crete and Iron Age Britain may not be properly understood without reference to man’s first war machine.

Cotterell discusses the military uses and implications of this machine. This is the focus of the book. His source material, however, is rarely divorced from the sacred poetic record, most notably the Iliad, the Riga Veda and the Mahabharata. The narrative of the Bible, epic poetry of China, and the propaganda of Assyria and Egypt are also rich sources of information. Indeed, the chariot was so fundamental to the transformation of early river-valley civilizations into imperialistic mixed economies, that one may not approach the subject in a purely tactical or strategic sense, but holistically.

An astounding example of the cultural nuggets implicate in this study is the subject of bestiality and sacrifice among Indo-Europeans. If you are a neo-con scavenging ancient references to early Indo-European cultural supremacy in order to prove European superiority [like the guys data-mining Tacitus], you might want to redact this portion.

The centaur is a central figure in Greek myth regarding warfare, marriage and boxing, and seems to be linked to ancient bestiality-enhanced sacrificial rites, from India to Ireland. The most heinous of these was Irish—and pre-Jameson whiskey I might add—from the area of Ulster, in which an ascending king mated with a mare. Please boys, somebody grab those hooves! But then again, it might just be my male human perspective. Maybe this was less pleasurable for the mare than for the stallions who got to mate with Indian queens. In any case, any pleasure for the poor horse ended when it was sacrificed. I mean we cannot let it get around the animal world that human royalty behave immorally to their livestock. It appears that ancient Indo-European cultures were sometimes places were men were men, and mares were scared to death because of it! The Hittites even had codified exemptions for having sex with horses within their law code, which explicitly banned sex with pigs, goats and cattle. We humans must have standards where interspecies porn is considered after all!

Keep in mind, when looking into chariot culture, that it was a precursor to steppes horse culture from the Scythians and Amazons to the Mongols and Turks.