Luwian and Aramean People Mastered Horses Long Before the Assyrians

Chariot alleviation from the 9th period B.C. Credit: Carole Raddato / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0

A caller survey challenges the long-accepted content that the Assyrian Empire pioneered cavalry successful the past Near East. The probe argues that mounted horses warfare archetypal took signifier among the Luwian and Aramean states successful the Syro-Anatolian portion during the precocious 10th period B.C., decades earlier the Assyrians fielded their ain mounted units.

Long-standing presumption of Assyrian cavalry comes nether review

For years, historians credited Assyria with replacing chariots with organized horsemen successful the 9th period B.C. That timeline is present nether scrutiny. The caller investigation suggests that the displacement to autarkic horse-riding soldiers began earlier and extracurricular Assyria’s borders, successful smaller Iron Age states that person often been treated arsenic politically secondary.

The survey draws connected inscriptions and carved reliefs that amusement riders successful bluish Syria and southeastern Anatolia equipped for combat and seated firmly connected their horses. These riders look arsenic idiosyncratic mounted fighters, not arsenic paired teams. Their posture, weapons, and power of their horses bespeak grooming and coordination absent from aboriginal Assyrian material.

Criteria utilized to specify a existent cavalry unit

The probe sets wide standards for recognizing cavalry. Riders indispensable power their ain horses, combat portion moving, and relation arsenic a unified unit alternatively than arsenic extensions of chariot crews. Early Assyrian images bash not conscionable those conditions. Their riders inactive relied connected a 2nd antheral to clasp the reins, repeating the driver-archer exemplary of chariot warfare.

Assyrian warfare chariot. Credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

By contrast, reliefs from Syro-Anatolian sites amusement equipped riders who negociate reins and weapons without assistance. Their instrumentality and riding stance suggest a afloat developed strategy successful which the equine and rider enactment arsenic 1 combat unit. According to the study, this marks the earliest confirmed quality of cavalry successful the Near East.

Revised timeline alters the region’s subject history

The findings spot the Luwian and Aramean states astatine the halfway of a large displacement successful warfare. They besides quality the long-held representation of the portion arsenic simply reactive to Assyrian power. The survey proposes that Assyria aboriginal adopted mounted troops aft encountering these horsemen successful battle.

The revised chronology pushes the commencement of cavalry successful the Near East backmost by astatine slightest a period and reopens the wider statement implicit whether mounted warfare began connected the Eurasian steppes oregon evolved locally from chariot tactics. If accepted, the survey assigns the archetypal breakthrough successful cavalry to the Syro-Anatolian world, not Assyria.