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I'm not familiar enough with early medieval military history to know the ins and outs of this debate, but theory seems obviously falsified by the fact that char
by ummonk 5y ago
I'm not familiar enough with early medieval military history to know the ins and outs of this debate, but theory seems obviously falsified by the fact that chariot technology in other time periods did not result in such a feudal system.
- DarylZero 5y agox
- ummonk 5y agoAmazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sillyquiet 5y agoYeah, none of that is true. Chariots were the deciding factor in many battles from the point they were invented by the people of the Sintashta culture until the last few centuries BCE and spread everywhere from Egypt to India to China. Chariots did not need roads, but they were certainly less effective in broken terrain - but so is mounted cavalry. The reason they spread so quickly from the Eurasian steppes to throughout most of Europe and Asia was precisely because they were so dominant. As a matter of fact, not only did the chariot spread, but the horses the Sintashta culture and its immediate daughter cultures bred to best PULL the chariots spread with the chariot to the extent they are the ancestors of every single domestic horse in the world.
- compiler-guy 5y agoIf it were obviously falsified by evidence a random fact that reasonably well-educated but non-specialist knows off the top of their head, it wouldn’t be a controversy and hardly of note. Scholars have written scores of papers and spilled gallons of ink on both sides of the topic. What do you know that they don’t? I think the theory is wrong, or at least incomplete, but the evidence against isn’t as clear as all that.
- ummonk 5y agoThat’s not necessarily true. Often, a lack of interdisciplinary engagement can result in easily in theories or debates lasting far longer than they should. In this case, the debate seems to have been confined to medievalists not military historians, and going by the way Wikipedia article it appears that once experimental archeologists weighed in, they were rather critical of the theory. For a similar example from another field, observe the decades long contention in epidemiology about droplet sizes and viruses like the flu and Covid not being airborne, in contradiction to basic aerosol physics.
- compiler-guy 5y agoNot necessarily, sure. But the odds that you just happen to know some fact that "obviously falsifies" a decades old scientific controversy are very close to zero. In fact, if you are right, you should write up a paper. There are numerous journals that would be thrilled to resolve this controversy once and for all.
- ummonk 5y agoGiven that there are only six citations in the Wikipedia article, I don’t think the debate is nearly as noteworthy as you think it is.
- compiler-guy 5y agoThe paper you write which puts it all to bed with the obvious refutation that somehow all those sources missed could be the seventh.