Lchashen wagon: A 3,500-year-old covered wagon that transported a deceased chief to the next world
QUICK FACTS
Name: Wagon Lchashen
What is this : An oak wagon
Where does it come from: Village of Lchashen, Armenia
When it was made: Around 1500 BC
Covered wagons are often associated with the Wild West. But the best-preserved example of an ancient covered wagon was discovered in a Bronze Age tomb in Armenia, where it had been buried for 3,500 years.
Exhibited at the Armenian History Museum in Yerevan, the Lchashen wagon was composed of at least 70 pieces connected together by a mortise and tenon system involving split pieces of wood and bronze fittings. The canopy frame required at least 600 mortise holes, archaeologist Stuart Piggott wrote in a 1968 studyindicating the precise work required to create the wagon.
The wagon measures approximately 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length. Each wooden wheel consisted of two wooden plates joined together and measured 160 centimeters in height, wrote historian Christoph Baumer in “History of the Caucasus” (Bloomsbury, 2021).
The Lchashen wagon was discovered in the 1950s, when construction workers from the Soviet Union drained part of Lake Sevan in Armenia to irrigate a nearby plain. They discovered a late Bronze Age cemetery containing more than 500 burials, as well as hundreds of grave goods. A distinctive feature of the Lchashen necropolis is the presence of two- and four-wheeled carts, as well as bronze models of war chariots, archaeologist LA Petrosyan wrote in an article. 2016 study.
Although some claim that the Lchashen wagon is the “the oldest in the world“, there is ample evidence of wagon and boxcar technology that predates this example. The exact dates of invention are still debated, but humans probably first invented the wheel and wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia during the Copper Age, between about 4,500 and 3,300 BC.
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But the Lchashen wagon is a very early – as well as the best preserved – example of a covered wagon with spoked wheels on the axles, demonstrating innovation in early wheeled vehicles. Whether this technology was invented in Armenia or came from Mesopotamia to the south or the Russian steppe to the north is still being researched.
According to the Armenian History MuseumBurials with wheeled vehicles appeared in the Middle Bronze Age (2400 to 1500 BC) in Armenia, but became more popular in the Late Bronze Age, when they were used as vehicles to physically and metaphorically transport the remains of a deceased ruler into the next life.
For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Amazing artifacts archives.
