The Coming of the Greekscarpenters and wheelwrights in Mitanni, Hatti, or the Fertile
Crescent were equally accomplished, the likelihood is that at
least in the first half of the second millennium they were not.
As we have seen, when spoked wheels first appear in the Near
East, they appear in those outposts of Near Eastern civiliza-
tion—Kiiltepe and Chagar Bazar—closest to Armenia.
Further evidence for the primacy of the lands south of the
Caucasus in the development of the chariot comes from thou-
sands of rock carvings found in the Syunik region of Armenia,
at an altitude of 3,300 meters. Although the carvings are, of
course, not readily dateable, they "are considered to cover a
period from the fifth through the second millennium B.C.," 117
and they seem to show a development from wagons to spoked-
wheel carts (many of them ox-drawn) and horse-drawn "char-
iots."" 8 In short, it may be that many of the innovations that
occurred in wheeled vehicles during the third and early second
millennia occurred in Transcaucasia. Perhaps the spoked wheel
originated here, as an improvement designed for the ox cart;
and perhaps only after light, spoke-wheeled vehicles had been
developed did the cart drivers begin to substitute horses for
oxen, and to breed horses on a scale that until then had been
found only north of the Caucasus. We may tentatively conclude
that the chariot was developed in Armenia, and that the reason
why it was developed there is that the making of wheeled ve-
hicles was all along—from the very beginning of wheeled
transport—a specialty of that region.
Let us now turn to our second question: can the development
or the perfection of chariot warfare be traced to any one region?
Here one must begin with the negative observation that no-
where in the Eurasian steppe is there any evidence whatever for
gon was made out of seventy pieces with twelve thousand mortices of vary-
ing size, round and square."
- M. A. Littauer, "Rock Carvings of Chariots in Transcaucasia,
Central Asia and Outer Mongolia," PPS 43 (1977): 243. - Ibid. ,251, Littauer suggests that these spoked two-wheelers
were carts, meant merely for transportation, rather than military chariots.
See her figs. 1-7 for the relevant carvings.
118