So, from my understanding, chariots were used in the Bronze age and were essentially the lynchpin of Bronze age armies, then the Bronze age collapse happened and most people stopped using them.
I would desperately love to know why.
They seem to still be extremely effective for centuries afterwards.
I was always under the impression that later Kingdoms and empires just weren't as heavily centralised as Bronze age kingdoms and so couldn't keep training a permanent charioteer class and a permanent chariot engineer class to keep the things running, but if that's the case then how come they turn up not only in the hands of the Persians but in the hands of the BRITONS of all people.
How and why where the Britons able to use chariots?
And given how devastatingly effective Caesar records them as being, why did no one else use them except for the Achaeminids?
It can't be because of terrain issues because the Mycenaeans used them in the Bronze age despite Greece being mountainous as all hell and the Britons used them in the forested areas around the Thames.
It can't be because of lack of centralised leadership and wealth because the Britons are able to use them in their small tribal confederacies.
Why did chariots stop being used?
u/RiceEatingSavage provided a couple of results for a very similar question a couple of days ago (I always wonder what causes these clusters of similar questions - similar timing for people covering it in school?) which I'll relink here:
u/PM_ME_UR_SADDLEBREDS
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/caspqp/what_made_the_chariots_obsolete/etk8xz4/
that's probably the question most like yours.
u/JoshoBrouwers
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g83qkj/how_would_chariot_combat_work/
Some highlights - the Mycenaeans probably didn't really use them for the reasons you pointed out. They lasted well beyond the end of the Bronze Age Collapse and were still in use by the Assyrian empire all the way to its end, though by then cavalry riding horses was on the rise. The Achaemenids did deploy them but they used scythed chariots, hoping that lopping off limbs and such would sufficiently demoralize the enemy, but the consensus seems to be they were never all that effective. Xenophon and the mercenaries seem to have overcome them through the exciting strategy of moving slightly out of the way (chariots at speed being about as maneuverable as a brick). Of the chariots that weren't neutralized this way, some are described as panicking and running back through their own lines. Whoops.