masterfulfudge

I'm not a fan of historical re-enactments, as they introduce to the viewer inaccuracies through sloppy "filmmaking". This show doesn't rely on too much of that, but still they keep showing very Northern Chinese looking Zhou warriors on a chariot in a group of three, looking like awkward bumbling re-enactors, almost immediately rendering their portrayal detrimental to perceptions of any accuracy. This quibbling aside, the show goes about trying to convince the viewer that Zhou chariots were superior to the chariots of the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. While such techniques as placing the axle under the center of the platform may distinguish it from Hittite or Mycenaean or Egyptian war chariots, they don't necessarily represent a surpassing of the much, much older and lighter war chariots of the Mid East. The chariots of the show were "invented" fully half a millennium AFTER the battle of Kadesh, which to many historians represents the end of the age of bronze age charioteering, and the start of iron age warfare. That battle saw three-man crews, AND right-handed and left-handed battle platforms. The Egyptians hired "Greek" warriors to join the driver and archer on-board. This third would jump off the moving chariot behind enemy lines. So, the show says the Chinese invented using a third. Wrong. They also suggest there was no real purpose to the third. Stupid. Finally, the "historian" who is the arms re-creationist in every one of these shows is a pain in the neck: he's often WRONG, very image-obsessed, and always striving to show his virility and superiority to whomever he's with, when actually he just sounds like an aging British twit who loves to add his two pence. I feel this show makes too much out of China's late-to-the-picnic chariot methods. More of a History channel sort of waste of time.