Chariot Clan (Civ6)/Civilopedia

It is important to remember, that for much of antiquity most people lived outside of states. While Mesopotamia hosted Babylon, Assyria and Sumer, and while the Shang Dynasty formed in ancient China, vast numbers of people lived outside of these realms. While soon powers based around highly mobile horse archers would emerge – powers like the Parthians who menaced Central Asia around 250 BCE – the first such mobile, raiding technology was the chariot, and for the origins of that we must go thousands of years prior. Early chariots first appear in central Asian archaeological sites amongst people such as the Sintashta or Maykop. Following upon the domestication of horses also in this region, the spoked wheel allowed people to move themselves – and war parties – across the open plain (although such technologies became less useful in monsoon-prone areas, forested regions, or broken terrain.
Chariots were vital to the movement of early peoples. When the Egyptians were overtaken by the raiding Hyksos in around 1600 BCE, their attackers came on the backs of chariots. For the Vedic people of India – similar migrants attached to and following their horses – the chariot becomes a central part of their imagery (as in its significance in the Rig Veda). The Chinese Shang Dynasty themselves used chariots as supply trains, but were in turn challenged by raiding outsiders who had adapted these for war.
Over time, new technologies emerged. In the Near East, groups such as the Parthians adopted the composite bow, allowing a horse and rider to move (and strike) much more quickly than a charioteer. In China, a combination of new crossbow technology, better anti-cavalry weapons, and the adoption of mounted composite bow archery led to the chariot’s decline, although chariots remained in use as fancy wagons for centuries onwards.