Spears or pikes versus cav is a different thing altogether. Basically a gutsy phalanx or even Napoleonic infantry square only had to hold its ground. The problem in dealing with a legion was its inherent flexibility. Once the legionaries got inside your phalanx under the reach of your pikes you were history.

GD I don't want to sound picky but what the tv show said about the third horse just doesn't ring true. Read "The End of the Bronze Age" by Robert Drew for a really impressive analysis of how chariots were used. They were apparently accompanied by skirmishers on foot armed with axes/swords who would hang on to the team then run for a distance.

Horses were fabulously expensive items in those days.

Don;t worry, no pickyness detected.
From what I saw on the prog, they were taking it from very detailed stone carvings of Assyrian charioteers. I clearly showed the horse attatched only by reigns, not to the spindle. How they determined that it was sacrificial is another matter.
They also showed a very bizarre setup whereby two horse rode side by side (I forget whether they were actually teathered). One rider on one horse controlled both hoses, and the other rider on the other horse shot the arrows. In someways it was really ractical - the archer had only to concentrate on hitting the target not control, but on the other hand, it seemed incredibly difficult to control the horses.

The book by Robert Drew admittably covers the fall of the Mycenian, Cretan and Hittite cultures as well as those of the Palestine area, Ugarit etc. This was also the time of the invasion of Egypt by the Sea People.

All these Bronze Age Civilisations based their power on elite corps of charioteers, and only wealthy rulers could afford them. Tactically they operated as weapons platforms for the Asiatic compound bow, and battles were often inconclusive affairs with masses of chariots swirling around each in complex manoevers. Infantry as such had merely a walk-on part in support of the chariots. Mostly they were armed with blunt impact weapons rather than swords.

There are numerous references to the use of "runners" or skirmishers who would literally run along with the chariots to protect them from enemy skirmishers. When the chariots speeded up the runners would hang onto the horses.

All this was before the Assyrian Empire of the eighth century BC, the period when I imagine the program was focussed, but by that time the golden age of chariot warfare was well and truly over, together with the kingdoms relying on it.

Per Drew, what finished the chariot as a decisive weapon was the impact of masses of javelin-armed infantry, who targeted the horses rather than the bowmen. The vastly expensive chariot rigs, horses and crew could only be afforded by wealthy kingdoms, whilst there were thousands of mercenary, backwoods javelin-throwing soldiers available. Result..instant democratisation of warfare similar to the introduction of the long-bow and firearms in later periods.

These guys weren't interested in negotiated boundary adjustments and dynastic evolutions and brought down every civilisation in the Eastern Med within a couple of decades. The Dark Age lasted until the seventh century bc. It's from this period that the legends of the Trojan War come from.

Interestingly enough the Assyrian kingdom was one of the few to escape the impact of the new warfare due to their remoteness from the Med itself. The massed javelin-armed raiders seem largely to have been sea-borne.

Thanks for that reply. Great stuff. Very informative.