Chariot Racers of the Steppes

The invention of the chariot reinvented the art of warfare. This high-speed, highly maneuverable vehicle gave a warrior a protected platform from which he could shoot an arrow or launch a spear and make a quick getaway. Archeologists have long assumed that the first charioteers were the urban sophisticates of ancient Mesopotamia, the innovators who gave us writing and metallurgy--and, more to the point, the wheel. But David Anthony, an archeologist from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, subscribes to a different theory. He thinks the earliest charioteers were not the people who invented the wheel but the people who first rode on horseback--the nomads of the Eurasian steppes.