Europe's terrain didn't change after the Romans collapsed, so why did everyone stop using chariots in warfare?
Horses got bigger and saddles were invented so it became cost-effective to have one horse per soldier.
>>64968407Romans didn't use chariots in warfare, they used them for racing.
>>64968407Chariots were already a meme back in the days of the Romans. They used them for racing and to transport dignitaries during processions.
>>64968407romans never really used them in war read a book made of paper
The orthodox - and inaccurate - claim is >>64968415Yet horses did not suddenly go from ponies to gigachads in the 9th century when cavalry appears. Moreover, there are depictions of mounted cavalry going back to ~1300 or so but they are very rare, and generally seated further back on the horse (I believe like one rides a donkey unless they are a Tijuana whore in which case the reverse happens). A compelling argument I read suggested that metal bits start to appear around the late bronze age rather than leather/wood/bone and these allow for a construction of a bit which is not possible for a horse to gum/tongue into a position where it has little to no persuasion on the horse. You don't want to ride a horse you can't control into battle. A bit builds up the confidence to ride them, and in turn the training and knowledge of how to do so reliably.Pic related is circa 850 or so and depicts what are likely Neo-Hittite or Aramaeans fleeing from Assyria, yet already from this stage being experienced enough to ride properly in the saddle (compared to the same or contemporary depictions of Assyrians being scaredycats riding 'faux chariot' with one man holding the reins of the other as the other shoots a bow, and I believe sitting further back on the horse) and to do parthian shots.It's possible the emergence of cavalry among the Celts coincides with the introduction of cavalry techniques by the Scythians, but I am not sure how far back into ~600s or ~500s Celtic horsemanship goes.Chariots lingered because change can be slow unless stimulated by outsiders or emergency.
>>64968450Likewise I don't know of saddles until the celts four-horned one or pseudo-saddles by the Romans, which means a gap of 800s BC down to ~200s BC or thereabouts. tl;dr is that Robert Drews' Early Riders book is the one that addresses this theory of the bronze snaffle bit. Look at pic related, from Robert Drew's Early Riders book. I wasn't able to find the page where the author talks about how the bronze bit would resist breaking that wood/leather wouldn't but you can imagine it. Use a leather loop to secure two spits of bone and that's going to break real fucking soon compared to using bronze-against-bronze
>>64968461Oh, I am mistaken about the jointed snaffle appearing later. That said I remember in the book that bit about how organic materials would be more vulnerable to wear and the horse moving it in a way that stops the coercive pain. That 2nd part on the right is from earlier, it's not following the passage I posted. My hunch would be the jointed snaffle talked about is the organic one, not bronze, since the later section mentions the jointed snaffle bit appeared in 1000 BC - but this following a paragraph saying "The bronze bit". So the bronze bit went from rod/bar to jointed, but jointed (organic, presumably) bits existed since 14th century BC.
>>64968407Chariots were an obsolete doctrine even by the Roman period, and during the Roman period cavalry went through several doctrinal changes (light cav, horse archers, cataphracts) until eventually landing on the classical Medieval Knight. What's the point of a chariot when you could have an armored horse and armored rider?
>>64968407Some steppe nomad invented a stirrup and everyone swapped to heavy cavalry.
>>64968407Didn't the Romans consider the British barbaric because they still used chariots?
>>64968450Did the goths have any factor in the invention of the saddle and horseback culture?
>>64968773They got absolutely raped by Boudica’s chariots. The issue was the Iceni were retards and had an idea of 'honor' and 'personal strength', so after they fired all their javelins (which were raping the Romans in constant battles) they would dismount and go in on foot, which favored the Romans massively. Same issue happened in Watling Street, except it became a massacre because all the tribes families came to watch and formed essentially a barricade and the fleeing warriors got trapped against it, by and large.
>>64969260sounds like the Iceni got exterminated because of dogma kek
>>64968474Heavy cav predates stirrups
>>64968773I'm sure by default and by definition they considered everybody not Roman or Greek barbarians.
>>64969305Yeah, but it kinda sucked before stirrups. It's like how the idea of APFSDS is old as hell but it wasn't really useful until the modern era.pic unrelated
>>64968436> read a book made of paperPaper? Like from the toilet?
>>64968450>like one rides a donkey unless they are a Tijuana whore in which case the reverse happensI don't follow. Do you happen to have any imagery depicting the later?
>>64968407They became overengineered tanks.
>>64968407Chariots were only useful when they were the only way to use horses in warfare. Once mounted cavalry became viable there was no reason to use chariots. Horsemen were faster, nimble and easier and cheaper to maintain.
>>64968407>Europe's terrain didn't change after the Romans collapsedMy nig, it actually did. First, forests came back in a major way and then the colonization of Germany happened.
>>64968407...The Romans didn't really use chariots in warfare.There are loads of theories. One is that horses weren't suited to riding in earlier periods (absolutely false, as the first bodies with deformations indicative of constant horseback riding appear in Europe before the chariot), lack of equipment (bits, saddles, stirrups) which seems unlikely as if you can get a horse to pull a chariot, you can figure out a way to ride them. My theory is that chariots were incredibly effective against people who had never seen a chariot. They were not very effective at all against people who knew what a chariot was. They would be absurdly terrifying at first contact. But when you're facing people who know what a chariot is, have and use chariots themselves (even if not in war) it's just not as effective as a shock and awe weapon. It seems like war elephants were rather similar to be honest. By the iron age you're definitively not an Aryan warlord riding down the berrypickers and erasing their genome, the people you're facing are equally familiar with the chariot and their warriors are also an Aryan derived noble caste who specialize in warfare.
