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Even 5,000 Years Ago, Kids Were Playing With Toy Cars (or Chariots, Whichever)

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Sugmatar 5,000 year old Bronze Age clay toy chariot

Photo: International Business Times

If you are reading this article (or any of them on The News Wheel, for that matter), then odds are that you had toy cars to play with as a kid—my brothers and I personally had a collection of hundreds of assorted cars in a huge plastic bin.

Well, it turns out that you and I are not so different from kids 5,000 years ago—at least, if a toy chariot recently discovered in Turkey is any indication.

The toy in question was discovered in a tomb in the recently-excavated ancient city of Soğmatar, located in the southeast of modern Turkey, along with a rattle.

The age of the chariot puts it squarely in the Bronze Age, and was likely made for a child of one of the city’s administrators or kings, and gives us insight into the usually less-visible daily lives of children. As Celal Uludağ, head of the excavations, said, “It shows us the sense of art and children’s sense of play 5,000 years ago.”

For a little context, Soğmatar is one of the oldest settlements in the world, centered around a large hill. It was a religious center as well dedicated to the god of the moon, Sin, according to Harran University Archaeology Department Assistant Professor Yusuf Albayrak, who performed a surface survey on the site back in 2012.

It also holds some Judeo-Christian interest, as the area seems to be considered by some to be where Moses fled after escaping from Egypt following his killing of an Egyptian, although the Bible specifically just says that Moses lived in the “land of Midian,” which is an area in the northwest Arabian Peninsula near the Red Sea.

Either way, the chariot is gorgeously preserved with some very nice detailing on the back—and certainly way cooler than my old Matchbox cars.

News Sources: Jalopnik, International Business Times

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