"Ancient Aryans" Topic

I know there are no specific historical records but in YOUR opinion would the Aryans moving into India {if they Did} have rode on horseback or just used them to pull chariots.

If it happened – link – I would be surprised to see Aryans bringing chariots in over the mountains.

Chariots would be ridiculously difficult to move across that area… more likely horses, and very light packing.
If.

Recently on the history Channel, they talked about an Egyptian attack on a Cannanite/Amorite force. They carried all of their chariots over a mountain and through a pass that measured less an a few feet wide.

This was done in a military campaign.
Migration activity is more wide spread and covers many years. So yes they could have brought chariots to some extent. Or they could have had the chariot construction knowledge and used it to build chariots once they reached a region suitable for them.

Armchair General had a semi-bad article on that last month.

I guess with horses and adequate common sense, the chariots could be disassembled and carried into India.
But why?

There are routes from the Caspian to the Indus Valley that require no major crossing of mountains.

What they do require is a very long and organised pattern: whichever way you go it's a very long way.

The taking of chariots would be the least of their worries. If they felt they needed them for warfare, then they would take them.

With vimanas of course!

link

Greetings

Seems too early for ridden horses.

Don't see any more of a problem with chariots than any other items they need to transport – doubt that they would be carried across as chariots pulled by horses, more likely carried, possibly in pieces. A bit like Victorian mountain guns.

Yeah, dismantle the chariots and reassemble on the far side.

Seems too early for ridden horses.

Exactly. It took thousands of years to breed horses big and strong enough to carry an armed warrior into battle. Hence the development and dominance of the chariot, while horses remained small. Once larger horses were bred, chariots quickly fell out of use as a major weapon system. Why commit one soldier as a driver and a second as an archer when they both could ride horses and both fight? And the individual cavalryman was faster, more maneuverable and more capable of covering rough ground than the chariot team.

If there ever was an 'Aryan Invasion' (the evidence is very mixed), their mounted arm was chariotry, not cavalry. As written in the Vedas.

They wouldnt need to take the chariots, just the knowledge of how to make one!
Its supposition that the Aryans invented the chariot anyway, its possible they had some parts of the knowledge required to create the device, and people in the Indus valley had the rest.Who knows! Early chariots were probably like the ones used by Ur and Sumer…IMHO!

Those are donkeys pulling it!

Not at all impossible that they had a lighter , faster and more mobile two pony chariot that gave them a devastating tactical mobility, able to concentrate missile shock at chosen points on the battlefield.
The most insidious immigration is the gradual infiltration of an alien culture and language group that takes up residence, often on marginal land, becomes a useful source of military manpower because it is at a lower level of civilisation than the dominant group and then takes over. There is no invasion moment to mobilise opposition , the new rulers are already there.

There is a posited scenario that this is how te Aryan 'invasion' of India worked, small groups filter down through the passes into Afghanistan , moving with their locks into hilly areas that the agriculturalists are not concerned with. They hire out as guards and troops and eventually take over, having learnt organisation from the civilised. It is a very different model from that in which armies of chariot borne warriors sweep South and take the city states one by one.
Roy

Could they possibly have had mobile platforms as opposed to what we call chariots? Perhaps they just walked :)