Wheel 4

India
In India during the third millenniumb.c., the great Harappan civilization (c.2600-1500b.c.) arose in the Indus Valley. Distinguished by large complex cities with planned layouts and sewer systems, a relatively even distribution of wealth, and a still undeciphered writing system, the Harappan civilization has long been recognized as one of the independent centers of urban civilization in the Old World. Though preservation conditions and the absence of intentional burial have deprived us of actual examples of wheeled vehicles such as those found in Europe or Egypt, Harappan civilization reveals to us the form of their earliest vehicles through the use of terracotta models (see fig. 6). This illustration shows a heavy cart being pulled by a pair of oxen under a yoke bar. The wheels are apparently of single-piece or possibly tripartite wooden construction. Given the cargo of large jars, the purpose of this vehicle seems to be utilitarian and commercial. Model carts of this type have been excavated from the Harappan sites of Alamgirpur, Chanhu-Daro, Harappa, and Mohenjo-Daro. 18
Attendant on the collapse of Harappan civilization around 1500b.c., was an influx of people from the north known as the Aryans. This Indo-European speaking group immortalized their ritual and culture in an epic known as theRig Veda. In theRig Veda,the Aryans use wheeled vehicles of several types, but the one they prize most is the horse-drawn chariot. Vedic chariots are used in the races, hunting, and shooting rituals of the elite, but not in large-scale organized warfare. 19Whether the Aryans caused the collapse of Harappan civilization with their lightning-fast chariots is not known, but after their entrance into the subcontinent, the chariot was smoothly taken up into the permanent repertoire of wheeled vehicles in historic Indian civilizations. Many depictions of chariots are seen on the famous Sanchi monuments northeast of Bhopal which date to the first centurya.d. 20
Thus, in each of these societies, one sees a similar developmental course in the technology and use of wheeled vehicles. First, come the large, bulky vehicles drawn by bovids or asses which were used for utilitarian transport and elite ritual and which first appeared in the late fourth and early third millenniumb.c.in Mesopotamia, Europe, and India. Then, in the first half of the second millenniumb.c., the chariot was invented, either in the Caucasus or in Mesopotamia. This light and fast vehicle, which used the innovative draught of paired horses, was a sophisticated piece of technology. Its manufacture required advanced skills in carpentry (mortising, scarf joints, heat bending) and its maintenance and use required a sophisticated knowledge of animal husbandry and vehicular dynamics. 21As the new invention of the chariot swept across the Old World in the second millenniumb.c., it found an amenable home in each society it encountered, principally because each of these cultures had already acquired at least 750-1000 years of experience with other forms of wheeled transport, albeit slower and less complex ones.