> Is every culture's flying chariot also a heavier-than-air flying machine?

Who said it was a chariot? I think you are linking some "flying chariot" from other text to "vaayu yaan" from some different text. "vaayu" means "air" and "yaan" means "vehicle". This is far more specific that "flying chariot".

> And every chariot carrying the Moon a lunar lander?

Just curious, isn't carrying a Moon very different from landing on the Moon? Equating "carrying a Moon" to "landing on Moon" does not even mean same thing, so that can be thought as extrapolation. But the more specifics of "using vaayu yaan" to travel on earth from Lanka(which exists today) to Panchavati(which also exists today) does not need the extrapolation as was required in the previous sentence.

> "vaayu" means "air" and "yaan" means "vehicle"

Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots. We use the translation "chariot" because, at the time, the only vehicles we know of in the relevant culture were chariots.

> Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots.

No, that is not true. Your own sentence use the word "most". In Indian there is a distinction between vehicle("yaan") and chariot("rath").

> We use the translation "chariot" because, at the time, the only vehicles we know of in the relevant culture were chariots.

How do you know? If the ancient text itself makes a distinction between "vaayu yaan" and "rath" then that indicates there were more than one modes of transportation.

> Which is a valid translation for most mythology's flying chariots

>> No, that is not true. Your own sentence use the word "most".

This is a non sequitur. The claim was "flying vehicle" is a valid translation for what is commonly translated as "flying chariot" in most cultures, i.e. non-Indian cultures. (It's certainly so for Ancient Egyptian myths, for which, unlike Ramayana, we have contemporaneous sources.)

I'm actually struggling to think of a culture which (a) had, at the very least, chariots or something like them and (b) couldn't have some part of its ancient mythology properly translated as "flying vehicle." Maybe Sumerian?

>> In Indian there is a distinction between vehicle("yaan") and chariot("rath").

Clarification: in modern Hindi.

>> In Indian there is a distinction between vehicle("yaan") and chariot("rath").

> Clarification: in modern Hindi.

https://kosha.sanskrit.today/word/en/Chariot/sa

You don't know Samskrut, do you?

That might just mean the authors were smarter than their contemporaries, and realized that an air-traveling vehicle probably wouldn't look like a chariot.

Which does speak to their scientific knowledge, even absent an actual vehicle existing, given that their peers couldn't reason past "this thing we have on land, but in the air."

I’m imagining a similar debate in antiquity as I witness today whenever I suggest a helicopter does all the things people say they want from a flying car.

One problem with this line of logic is that we don't have any written text 1000s of years old, so we don't know if the words were changed in later renditions or if the story itself has been modified for changing times.