The history of British Chariots: advice please

[Chops]

In reading about the extraordinary Bronze, and the Iron, Age finds in Britain, I was stunned to read about
the ancient British using chariots against the invading Romans. Then I find that chariots (oh, BTW) are found
in numerous diggings in the UK.

Why this is amazing is that 1. chariot technology, particularly the suspension, and the wheels, are a remarkably
sophisticated technology to be able to run at the speed of horse over uneven terrain. Given enough wood and
power tools, I might be able to make an ox cart, 2. but a chariot is an advanced machine, something I did not associate
with people living in Round Houses, herding goats.

Ever since the North sea came crashing down, creating the English channel, severing the UK from being a peninsula
of France, it has been rather complicated for invaders to overtake Britain. In point of fact, Caligula gave up on the
idea and put his legions to work collecting sea shells on the coast of Normandy to claim victory over Neptune.

Not until AD 44 did Claudius follow in after advanced legions debarked and fought a bitterly determined opponent.
So my question is how did chariot technology creep up from Egypt, through Rome, no doubtedly, and across the
English Channel hundreds and hundreds of years before the Roman invasion? Where did British chariots
come from??? Given that it took so very long for Britain to be overtaken from outside forces (Rome, e.g.) where
did the "first" chariot in Britain come from??? Anyone?

P.S.: I finally got some good information as to what the fall of the Roman Empire looked like circa 410 AD and why so much
advanced Roman architecture was left to rot, this source reported that even Londonium was turned into cultivated
fields not long after the last Romans left. It took me a long time to find this rather good video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKe9njOB24

[teedoubleudee]

Fascinating history lesson.

[Mr Bones]

Invaders may not have been successful, but I'm sure that we still traded with other countries even then. Easy for one small boat to cross rather than an invading army. There is evidence of traders travelling the world as it was then.

[Chops]

So to wrest another comparison out of this mystery, the British, or the Celts as they may be, were in possession of a world class
technology in advance of the most powerful and technologically savvy empire in the known world, by what appears to be
at least several hundred years. A chariot is an extraordinarily sophisticated machine with precision crafted wheels and suspension
to deliver lightening blows to one's enemy. It is not something that can be cobbled out of available mud and sticks, it is something
that requires keen insight and ability. It is though the British/Celts bunny-hopped the well developed Roman Industrial War Complex and
came out with a top secret prototype that made the Roman incursions very painful and costly affairs. The lowly Brits gave a thorough drubbing
upon the legions with there hit and run battle tactics and lightening chariot charges throwing back the phalanyxs of heavily armored legionairres.

Britain was a remote island from Rome, "the Wild, Wild, West, " if you will, and the Romans thought they could march in and mop up, but instead
got their heads handed back to them, initially. Not just the intense loyalty to their land and leadership, the Brits possessed a level of technology that rationally speaking they simply shouldn't logically have. They are running home built Egyptian templates way beyond the Roman adaptations thereof.

How did chariot technology reach the far lands of the realm, and be battle ready, in advance fo the Romans? I would have expected British defences to be comparatively disorganized and tribal, Pict like, being crushed by the battle discipline of the Romans. Not only did the Brit/Celts give a not response against greater odds, they also possessed chariots, they cutting edge of aggressive warfare. By common sense, those charitos should not have existed in British hands in the Romano invasion, no?

[LC&DR]

The comment above about trade is pertinent. Britain was a source of raw materials for example tin which was being mined in Cornwall, and was an important component of bronze, as too was copper which was also mined in Britain including parts of Wales. It is probable that tin and copper was being extracted before 3000 BC.

Trade by sea is at least as old as that, and although there are no written history there has been evidence that goods from the Mediterranean was finding its way to Britain, and vice versa.

There is nothing to suggest that the wheel cannot have been developed simultaneously in different parts of the world either.

[Chops]

A useful commentary. Indeed, who invented the wheel is a wonderful conundrum. The Mayans had the wheel, but as they lacked
domesticated beasts of burden, the wheel was relegated to a toy. I recollect it turned up again in Poland, some 7,000 years old, as part of a toy cart and pony. The ancient, and lost history, of Britain's status as a world trade center certainly covers a lot of territory, at least in a general way. It is well documented that Stonehenge attracted artisans from broad areas of Europe.

Certainly no early man, Neanderthal, Homo habilus, Cro Magnon, Homo erectus, to name a few, ever exhibited the concept of the wheel.

After sitting through some rather turgid narratives about the history and origins of chariots, and then upon the ancient origins of the
Celts, I stumbled onto something that cited DNA evidence, as well as some first millenium document (Declaration of Arbroath) about an early claim for Scotland's independence, that the Celtic people migrated out of the middle east along the southern reaches of Europe, North through Spain, and eventually across the Channel all the way to modern Wales.

The timing on that migration is a little tricky, as it occurs right about the time that chariots start showing up in the middle east, 1800 to 2000 BCE. So unless the migrating Celts-to-be stuffed a few examples in their kit bags for the long migration, the issue becomes a bit dodgey. Thus LCDR's view
of Britain as an ancient trading hub is a simpler, better, explanation. We will probably never know when the first chariot was traded for a large pile of tin, but the general concept makes a good deal of sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqvdRN7gnWQ

Well, one thing becomes clear, chariots were not exotic to Europe, or Britannia, in the way say, Roman war elephants were. It appears that the Celts were the last to use chariots for military purposes, fizzling out about AD 400. The Romans by about the invasion of Britannia had fairly ceased using them nearly as much, as the terrain did not support chariot wheels very well, but continued to race chariots, in occupied Britannia, most notably in Roman Colchester.

On a side note, it might appear that the first chariots showed up in Russia and migrated south to the middle East via trade routes.

[GeoffAlan2]

Chariots were used when there were no horses large enough to ride. The Ancient Britain's, the ones who met Caesar and the later invasion were using them because they always had. Being an island they didn't need to breed larger horses, even though in some cases sister tribes on the mainland were using cavalry rather than chariots before Caesar was around. There are benefits and costs to being an isolated island.
The Egyptians made heavy use of Chariots in warfare. They sprung the ride with a combination of wooden springs and a woven leather floor.
Caesar made much, in his book on the Gallic War of the British Charioteers' skills, saying they could run up the pole between the horses, casting javelins, while at the gallop. Then he doesn't mention them again. The Romans knew how to deal with chariots having met them before. An earlier battle where the enemy had chariots in great number saw the Romans so confident, that after they'd seen off the first charge, they started shout for the next 'race' just as they did in Rome at the Circus Maximus.

[Mountain Goat]

The old trding routes were from Britain in the west to China in the east. Even towards the last days of the sailing ships, nothing beat those ships made by China and others in the Far East for speed, and even seaworthiness as they were able to make good use of bamboo which is a material which became really saught after in the west where lovely bamboo rimmed wheels and bicycle frames were the ultimate goal for generations of riders. I once got to see a newly restored bamboo wheel with the old inch pitched grasstrack racing gears (Fixed) used in those days for strength and to reduce weight.

It is a major mistake to think that the anchients were backward in technological expertize, or that they were not advanced in materials. Certain metals, even today they don't know how it was done, and instead of admitting this, they tend to cover it up because the scientific and education industries would have to have a major re-adjusting of their facts.
Britain was at the edge of the trading routes. Israel was right at the centre. When the Romans started to conquor Europe their first goal was to conquor Israel as it was at the heart of the east/west trading system and everything went trough Israel at the time. Though I don't want to mention this for religious reasons, but the Bible does give quite a few gems of information of what was going on in Israel and surrounding area at the time. The Romans were already in control of Israel when Jesus was alive. and in Acts, when some of the Jewish leaders were trying to stop Christianity, it was the Roman governors who were trying to prevent an uproar as it was their heads on the line if they could not keep the peace! (It goes to show how organized the Roman empire was and how they could not simply march into a country and take it over. They had to work with the people rather then against them for their own survival in the foreign land they had conquored).
Something that struck me with both the Romans, along with the many other empires which made great inroads in the areas they conquored in their own times was not only how much they had to rely on those they had conquored for their food etc, as conquoring took a great number of hungry soldiers to feed and keep and one can't conquor and harvest food at the same time, but how much technology was shared through each empires efforts.
When I see todays logistics around the world, it is assumed that we are a "Modern" forward thinking technologically advanced human race, and in some ways we are... But in our hast to think this, we forget how much technology that even today we can't replicate, especially with unexpected finds like certain metalic items and certain buildings whose stones are so large and heavy that nothing around that we have today can lift them.
Going back to metals, we think of most hard metals as the invention of industrial times but the expertize of our ancient ancestors bare us swords found in the middle east which were so strong (And saught after in their time) that once the blade was sharpened, it did not need to be resharpened, and experts today have analysed them and don't know how they were able to make such a material as the recipe has now been lost. They know what materials went into the metal, but not how much or how they were able to fuse these materials together to make such a metal.
Another more recent historic discovery which has rather been played down is Noah's Ark... But even if one does not believe the vessel remains found are the ark, something very interesting was found. The bolts used in its construction were made from an alloy of materials including a large proportion of titanium, which in modern times was only "Discovered" in 1934 but these titanium bolts were found as an alloy of materials which is something they have not been able to do today in the same way, and it has baffled the experts in how they were able to do this.
With the evidence of these bolts and the swords, in both cases they know it "Can" be done but what they don't know is "How" they did it... Which is surprizing for me as we are supposed to be technologically advanced and yet we can't fathom out the processes of what had been done before!
Many mistakes have been made in assuming things in these modern times we live. Take Britains history as an example and take the construction of castles as a perfect example. Historic "Experts" assume that our ancestors built wooden castles first and then later built stone castles as technological advances increased and I don't deny that certain lessons were learned through past defeats... BUT, what we fail to realize are two points. The first is that stone built castles were nothing new and had been in use in Israel and surrounding lands a good 2000 years earler, and as Israel was at the centre of world trade in those days, communication between Britain and Israel was actually quite swift, as Britain was only two weeks travelling time by ship.
Secondly, stone built castles took a long time to build, and so one had to have peaceful times to live in to actually build them. If you happened to be living in turbulent times, there was no way you could build a stone castle. Your only hope was to build a wooden fort which only took a few weeks to build, and one could build them without attracting too much attention from the quarry owners, as stone quarrying areas were held in quite a high regard in many parts of the country. You owned a stone quarry and you were doing well!
Now it is assumed that wooden forts were built at earlier dates then stone built castles, but lets take a look at something. Firstly the times of the builds of stone castles tended to be in the moments of peace where there was a threat rather when there were wars. In other words, one can't start to build a castle during a war. One builds a fort instead and then builds a smaller stone castle inside it, so one has a quickly constructed fortress to protect the slow building of the stronger castle inside. One HAS to ensure one has access to stone. Wood is much easier. Stone takes longer to quarry, and mortar has to be made. Risky practices to do without some sort of protection!
Moving round the country building wooden forts was an easier defense for an army to do. Often a defesive fort was used to slow the enemy down at strategic locations, to allow others to flee to more defensive locations. Hence why forts and when they had a chance, castles were built at crossing points to rivers. High up castles and forts were built to ensure one as a good view of the land, and the high up position gave extra defense. These were the places to run to when the other defenses were conquored!

Now I love history especially railway history. It has been suggested that the Romans invented the first railways, but what one forgets is that the Romans conquored many different lands, and therefore the invention was far more likely to have been invented before the Romans conquored. But regardless of who invented them, what we see is pure genius, because using wooden guides one could guide rigid chariots. Now why was this a good idea? Consider this. Manpower was always in short supply, and carrying goods from one place to the next took people even if chariots were used. The sea was (And still is) the most widely used form of transportation for bulk goods. Now consider this. One can hitch up an animal to a cart and send it on its way and then send others behind it, and as long as those animals kept moving, one did not need so many people to transport the goods.
The one big drawback for any railway system has always been when one lives in hostile times of war, as railed transport is vunerable. So for the Romans, they could only have shared the practical use of these guide railed systems if they knew for sure that no one was going to sabatage them! As ones animals were highly prized posessions (Especially trained ones!), so using the railway system in countries that the had conquored... Uhmm! Probably not a good idea! Example. Here in Wales the Romans took over the low routes. The Welsh took to the hills and the defense of the hills meant that the Romans were never able to conquor them... The Romans left them alone as why risk ones soldiers lives chasing an enemy which has the advantage where in the low lying areas you have the advantage and have the strength to defend? The Romans tried many attacks in the hills but were largely unsuccessful as the strength of a legion had to be split up into single files and so they had become vunerable and open to attack.
Now if one even tried to build a railway you can imagine the consequence! They had enough trouble building roads, and had to be careful to build them in open surroundings where they could see any enemies approaching before they attacked.

[hunslet]

Some years ago I visited the Hull Street Life Museum where there is a reproduction Chariot from the Iron age.
Here are a couple of photos I took at the time which shows some details of the construction.




According to the museum website the chariot is still there but in a display with period figures and horses so not so easily seen as when I visited.

As a coincidence last week I cycled past the area where the Romans and Iceni are supposed to have fought their last battle after destroying Colchester and London !
Boudica is usually pictured riding a chariot so who knows there may be chariots still buried in the area.

There is a railway connection as the West Coast Main Line runs near to the supposed site and a narrow gauge railway ran from the granite ridge above the site to at first the canal and later to the railway. The railway bridge over the canal is still there and used for walkers and bikes.

Regards, Colin.

[Tony House]

Hi all

Don't forget about the hill forts that were built in the Bronze and Iron ages

The most famous being Maidens Castle just outside Dorchester. there are many more scattered around the country but none are as large as Maidens Castle.

In regards to history didn't they discover a Viking settlement remains in North America carbon dated 400 years before Columbus found it?