The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

The New Warfare

Provenance of the Chariot and of Chariot Warfare
Of the specialists on the horse and chariot in the ancient world,
a significant number have come to the conclusion that the char-
iot was developed in the highlands of eastern Anatolia (I here
use "Anatolia" in the widest possible sense, including all of
Asiatic Turkey, the northwestern tip of Iran, and the Soviet
republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia). Gertrud
Hermes, in articles published in the mid 19305, showed defin-
itively that the chariot was not perfected in northern Europe,
as earlier historians had supposed. 8 ' Her review of the evidence
pointed to eastern Anatolia as the most likely place for the
chariot's development. That surprising conclusion was not ac-
cepted initially, 86 but subsequently was endorsed in several
hippological studies. Most importantly, Franz Hangar, after
canvassing all possibilities in exhausting detail, reached the
conclusion that the horse-drawn chariot originated in the high-
lands of eastern Anatolia, especially Armenia and Transcauca-
sia. 87 Specialized studies on horses and chariots in the Aegean
and the Near East have concurred with the findings of Hermes
and Hangar. Thus Fritz Schachermeyr, in his study of Myce-
naean chariots, found that their trail led "auf die Berglander
Armeniens." 88 And in 1963 Albrecht Goetze matter-of-factly
observed that the evidence points "to the Ararat region as the
place where the chariot was, if not invented, certainly per-
fected."* 9
On the other hand, among Indo-Europeanists and among

85. For Hermes's articles in Anthropos, see Ch. Three, n. 3.


86. J. Wiesner, "Fahren und Reiten in Alteuropa und im Alten
    Orient," Der Alte Orient 38 (1939) (reprinted under separate cover (Olms:
    Hildesheim, 1971]; my page references are to the Olms reprint). Weisner
    maintained—although in a somewhat revised form—the old view that the
    chariot was brought into the Near East by invaders from the north.


87. Hangar, Das Pferd, 472-535.


88. F. Schachermeyr, "Streitwagen und Streitwagenbild im Alten
    Orient und bei den mykenischen Griechen," Antbropos 46 (1951): 712.


89. A. Goetze, "Warfare in Asia Minor," Iraq 25 (1963): 125.

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