Horses and chariots
It is argued here that the arrival of militarism on the Greek mainland was an event,
or a short series of events, at the center of which were military chariots.
Archaeologists intent on continuity and evolution are loathe to accept such a
conclusion. Oliver Dickinson, who has for decades been expert sans pareilon the
Aegean Bronze Age, conceded that in the LH period horses were used to pull the
palaces’ chariots.
But this association with the chariot was established long after the horse’s
first appearance in the Aegean, which must be firmly separated from the
dramatic ‘Indo-European’ overtones that it used to have; its introduction is
in fact unlikely to have had any appreciable social or economic effects.^28The earliest horse bones (excluding those from Pleistocene times) reported from
Greece come from EH III Tiryns: among the many bones found in dumps on the
Tiryns citadel were three identified as coming from an Equus caballus. Either the
three bones were misidentified or some Tirynthians had gone to a great deal of
trouble to import a horse for butchering.^29 Tamed horses appeared in Greece only
in the MH period. Although a few may from time to time have been ridden, their
normal function was to pull chariots or other spoke-wheeled carts. In the first half
of the second millennium BC, in fact, tamed horses can seldom be separated
from spoke-wheeled carts. Late in the MM II period a ruler on Crete may have
employed a few military chariot crews and may even have purchased—as several
Near Eastern kings had done—one or more chariots and trained horses for his
own recreation and display. Such harbingers would in themselves have been of
no historic importance, but there are indications that toward the end of the
MM/MH period chariots came in numbers, as part of a military force that initiated
the transformation of Greece.
On the assumption that the inhabitants of MH Greece had a military tradition
(and a military organization?), Dickinson argued that even if chariots were brought
in by an invading force they would have made little difference in battle, because
mainland commanders would quickly have found a way to counter them, just as
the Romans were quick to neutralize Pyrrhus’s elephants.^30 But we have no
reason to think that the inhabitants of MH Greece had any commanders, any
military tradition, any resemblance to the Romans of the third century BC, or indeed
had ever fought a battle. They are likely to have submitted at the very sight of
chariots and a military force.
Apparently horses and chariots came to the Troad at about the same time that
they came to the Greek mainland. Troy II, a rich fortress-city, had been destroyed
ca. 2200 BCand for the next 500 years—through the strata of Troy III, IV and
V—the site was undistinguished. Then the imposing Troy VI was built, and it
would remain a dominant city in northwest Anatolia through most of the Late
Bronze Age. The building of Troy VI is often dated ca. 1700 BC, and that or an
even earlier date would be correct if the Thera volcano did indeed erupt ca. 1628 BC.
Militarism in Greece 181