车子的演进与传播——兼论中国古代马车的起源问题

根据考古学材料,最早的车子出现在公元前4000年代的两河流域以及中欧与东欧,其基本形式为四轮、独辕,车轮为实心.虽然车子出现时,马已经被人所驯养,但早期的马主要用来骑乘,而不是拉车,拉车的主要是牛.公元前2000年代后期出现了辐式车轮.进入公元前2000年,欧洲与西亚都出现了双轮马车.根据考古材料以及岩画上的图案,中国的马车应当是从西方传入的.马车的传播是古代中国吸收外来先进文化的一个实例.

Chariot:Its Evolution and Introduction

The wheeled vehicles first appeared in the Near East and Europe during the later period of the 4th millennium BC. In Mesopotamia, we can see the wagon pictographs in the clay tablets from level IVa at Uruk. Archaeologists have also found two clay wheel models in Syria and Turkey. In Europe, the earliest evidence about wheeled vehicles come from some late 4th millennium sites in Germany, Poland and Hungary. It is evident that the earliest vehicles are four wheeled, and the wheels were solid. In the 3rd millennium, more evidence about the wheeled vehicles, including artistic representations and actual remains, were excavated in the Near East and Europe. In general, the wheels in the 3rd millennium can be divided into two types. One has round axle hole, which means that the axle was fixed while wheels rotated; and the other has a rectangular axle hole, which means that both the wheels and axle rotated together. From their beginnings, the wagons were drawn mainly by oxen while the horses were domesticated mainly for eating and riding. With the improvement of vehicle making, especially the appearance of spoked wheels in the late 3rd millennium, the horses were gradually used for drawing vehicles. Around 2 000 BC, the chariots which had two spoked wheels and drawn by horses appeared in Europe and the Near East, the most famous site being Sintashta in the trans Ural steppe.Besides models and actual vehicles, we also have many rock drawings of chariots in northern Eurasia, especially from Central Asia to Inner Mongolia. By comparing these rock drawings, it can be easily found that in Central Asia there are various types of chariots, including four wheelers and two wheelers; but in Xinjiang, Outer and Inner Mogolia, the basic type is a two wheeled chariot which has more spokes than that in Central Asia. It is concluded that the rock drawing shows that the chariots were spread gradually from the West to the East.As for the origin of chariots in China, there are two conflicting opinions. One is that the chariots were invented in China, and the other is that the chariots were introduced from the West. The writer points out that the former opinion is more convincing due to the following facts: the chariots appeared much earlier in the West than in China. In the West, we can find clearly the complete development of the wheeled vehicles from wagons with four solid wheels drawn by oxen to the chariots with two spoked wheels drawn by horses, while in China, the chariots seem to have appeared abruptly. Furthermore, early Chinese chariots bear striking similarities to those in the West; even the domestication of horses was introduced into China from the West; and ancient Chinese records indicate that the chariots appeared first in northern China and later in southern China. The introduction of chariots into China from the West is one piece of evidence showing that Chinese civilization absorbed foreign culture from its very beginning.