Wikipedia says that horse chariots are thought to have been invented "early in the 2nd millennium BCE" - so what is represented on the Standard of Ur (~2600BC)?

by lreland2

The wikipedia text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot#Ancient_Near_East

Some scholars argue that the horse chariot was most likely a product of the ancient Near East early in the 2nd millennium BCE.

So what am I looked at here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg

if not horse-drawn chariots?

Iphikrates

The Wikipedia page specifically defines a chariot as a horse-drawn vehicle with two spoked wheels. This is also the specific topic of the scholarly work cited to show that "spoke-wheeled and horse-drawn chariots" were first introduced to the Near East in the early second millennium BC. The vehicles on the Standard of Ur do not meet any of these criteria; they are four-wheeled wagons, with solid disk wheels, drawn by donkeys. Further up the page, Wikipedia itself disqualifies these as "more properly called wagons or carts".