He says that the wheel did not arive in Britain until 500 BC!
This seems incredibly late? It is practically in British recorded history - the normal history curriculum for British kids is 55BC to present day. I wondered, and went out on the net looking for any information. There I found assertions varying from 1500BC to 5000BC, which seemed far more realistic, though none of them provide checkable references. And then I found this site:
Look at it and you will find that it matches the Cecil information very closely, including the 500BC date. The problem is that it seems to be a child’s essay, with some very dubious information, and I would not use it as a reference. The site is a collection of essays on inventions, and seems to hold to the idea that Americans invented the aeroplane, television, and electricity.
Having seen this, and noting the wording similarities, I think I am justified in asking Cecil to provide references for his claim that the wheel arrived in Britain in 500BC.
So, Queen Boudicca didn’t have a chariot? Disappointing it is. Then again, in no longer trying to mimic her, I may cease to constantly have flat tires.
Boudicca’s rebellion was about 60AD - the chariot from which Tacitus reports her as addressing her troops could well have been a captured Roman one, given her series of victories at that point - and there is no reason to disbelieve this report.
I was surprised at Cecil’s date of 500BC for the Wheel in Britain, and wondered whether he had just copied his answer from a poor source on the net with little cross-checking.
“Chariots were in use in Britain from around 400 BC, perhaps earlier. The most famous British charioteer was, of course, Boudicca. She lived in the 1st century AD, some 400 years later than the Wetwang find and 100 years after Julius Caesar, who visited these shores in 55 and 54 BC and wrote about encountering British chariots in battle.”
I daresay they are not reffering to captured Roman chariots. I concur as to the 500BC mark being somewhat dubvious. Possibly it was only then that the British invented wheels that did not chop one’s hands off.
LOL
One can imagine the first chariot mechanics, covered in grease not because of the chariots themselves, but because somebody thought it clever to park them over tar pits.