"Did you give the horse strength and clothe his neck with a mane?"
(Job 39-19)
"Praise of stupidity"
It is simply amazing what abysses of human ignorance are opening up today thanks to the capabilities of the Internet system. I recently read in the comments that the Iron Age, it turns out, preceded the Bronze Age (and, of course, the copper stone), that there is no reliable historical data until the 19th century, and I don’t even know how people come to such "conclusions". Or that the finds in the ground, well, those that are made by archaeologists … were simply buried in order to dig up and sell later! Another "discovery" is worth it: horses, it turns out, were imported to Europe from America since the 17th century, and before they were in Europe … there simply weren't.
One of the oldest images of a rider on a horse …
A golden comb from the Solokha burial mound. IV century BC NS. Hermitage Museum. The massive comb weighs 294 g, its height is 12.3 cm, and its width is 10.2 cm. Nineteen long tetrahedral teeth are connected by a frieze of figures of lying lions. Above it is an amazing sculptural group depicting three fighting warriors. They are long-haired and bearded, and are dressed in typical Scythian clothes - caftans, long trousers and soft boots. Two of them are dressed in shells over their caftans, and the equestrian Scythian, apparently the king, has a typical Greek helmet on his head, and knemis leggings on his shins. All items of Scythian weapons - shields of various shapes and designs, gorita bows with bows and arrows, short Scythian akinaki swords in a scabbard, a spear of one of the warriors - were transferred with great accuracy. The horse depicted on the ridge is small in size and it is obvious that the warrior sits on it without using the stirrups.
On the same Internet I type the question: "How many people in Russia need urgent psychiatric help?" And immediately the answer is found: “According to the WHO, in the world by 2020, mental disorders will enter the top five diseases leading to disability. In Russia, the situation is complicated by an increase in the number of neurotic disorders associated with alcoholism, poverty and stress at work. According to studies, a mental or neurotic (depressive) disorder is observed in every third Russian. In Russia, up to 40% of the population have signs of any mental disorder. The share of people in need of systematic psychiatric care accounts for 3-6% of the population, and the number of the most severe patients is 0, 3-0, 6%. " (https://medportal.ru/mednovosti/news/2017/06/15/682psycho/)
1. Image of a horseman (about 3000 BC) from Torre de Bredos near La Coruna (Northern Spain)
2. Horse archer, cave painting (Tibet), circa 1200 BC. NS.
3. Rider on a horse, rock art (Sahara), around 1000 BC. NS.
4. The taming of wild horses, rock art (Sahara), around 1000 BC. NS.
5. Riders on eight-legged horses and chariots, rock paintings (Central Sahara), about 1000 BC. NS.
However, it happened by the way. Simply, as an indicator that not all of us and not all are well with brain activity. But here is the history of the horse … After all, this is really really interesting, because who, if not a horse, made a person the actual ruler of the planet? So you can even praise such people for … "their faith", because it gives us the opportunity to tell how it really was. Moreover, the role of the horse in the history of mankind was indeed exceptionally great. Yes, cats kept his grain and health, preventing epidemics, which were carried by rodents. Dogs - hunters and watchmen, even lay down under the tanks, trusting their masters. But most of all, it was the "greyhound horses" that did the most for man. Without them, man would not have been able to master the vast expanses of the Asian steppes and North American prairies. Without a horse, he would not have knights, there would be no great empires, the development of mankind stretched out for many millennia.
Temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt. Relief depicting a pharaoh on a chariot.
So the horse and the war. The horse and man in war, the Scythians and horsemen of Alexander the Great, the Huns of Attila and the knights on the mighty distributors - all of them will pass before us in a whole series of articles, in which all this will be told in as much detail as possible.
About the "conspiracy of paleontologists", "Tales of the Stone Age" by HG Wells and the sexy girl Eila …
Well, and we will have to start with a topic that is not very typical for us. From paleontology - a science that studies the fossil remains of ancient animals. And if ancient artifacts, as some think, someone buried in the ground for the sake of their antiquity, then someone, and paleontologists all the more, should be suspected of this. After all, their bones and coprolites of dinosaurs are even older. It's just not clear how and for what purpose they are doing all this. However, if there is a "conspiracy of watchmakers", "a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy" and even a "conspiracy of professional historians", why not a "conspiracy of paleontologists"? All around there are "conspirators", how interesting, and maybe scary to live, isn't it?
Assyrian relief from Nimrud, Central Palace, c. 728 BC British museum.
Be that as it may, and having dug up many tons, and that there are tons - thousands of tons of earth and sand, paleontologists found out that not only dinosaurs, but also the ancestors of modern horses lived on Earth for a long time - 64-38 million years ago in the hiracoterium lived in the forests of Europe, and in North America the eohippus ("early horse") are animals the size of a fox or slightly larger. They looked a little like modern horses, but, nevertheless, these were their ancestors.
The climate changed, the vegetation changed, and 38–26 million years ago, a larger mesohippus (“middle horse”) appeared. Even larger was the merigippus (27-26 million years ago), and then the pliohippus (5-2 million years ago. Finally, quite recently, in North America, the equus appeared - already the direct ancestor of modern horses, the size of a modern pony.
Bronze horse figurine from Olympia, c. 740 BC Louvre.
Through the so-called Beringia - an isthmus that existed in antiquity in the Bering Strait region, the ancestors of horses moved from America to Asia, and vice versa, followed by people who hunted them. And they hunted so successfully that in the North and South America in the postglacial time, all the ancestors of horses disappeared.
Alexander the Great on his Bucephalus. Fragment of a mosaic from Pompeii.
Well, the primitive horses that left North America soon spread throughout Asia, Europe and Africa. They lived both in areas with dense grass cover and soft and fertile soil, and on rocky mountain slopes, in the zone of arid steppes and deserts. According to these habitats, different types of horses arose. Those that lived among dense vegetation and in moist soil had a powerful body and wide, relatively soft hooves. Mountain horses were small, graceful, had narrow and hard hooves. Their suit also matched the color of the environment. In forest areas, dark horses survived, while it was more profitable for the inhabitants of deserts and steppes to have a yellow or gray color.
Alexander the Great on Bucephalus (sarcophagus from Sidon).
Information about what the equus looked like - the ancestor of modern horses, as well as donkeys and zebras, naturally, has not been preserved. But we know what his descendants - wild horses - looked like: the South Russian steppe horse, also called the steppe tarpan, the forest tarpan, and the Przewalski's horse, also known as the eastern wild horse. These types of horses lived in Europe and Asia two hundred years ago, but today they have almost completely disappeared. Only the Przewalski's horse is bred in our zoos. Her height at the withers is up to 130 cm and she is all covered with thick yellow-gray wool. The head is massive, on the neck there is a dark brush from a stiff mane and the same dark legs. The South Russian steppe tarpan, or simply tarpan, was more graceful than the Przewalski's horse. This horse had an ash color and a black "belt" along the entire back. Ponies appeared in northern Europe, the Shetland Islands and in some other places with extreme climatic conditions such as tundra, where the so-called tundra ponies were found. All these three types of horses, gradually interbreeding among themselves at the will of man, became the ancestors of all horse breeds known today.
The skeleton of the eogippus. The remains of these ancient equines are found all over the world.
But how did the horse become domesticated and where exactly did it happen? HG Wells, the author of great science fiction and social novels, was one of the first to try to answer this question in his Stone Age Tales. There is no point in retelling their content. Anyone interested - will find it on the Internet and read it. It is important to emphasize the author's point: everything could have happened by accident. And then … then something similar to what is described in the story will be repeated more than once and will end with the domestication of the horse, which people began to ride.
Trajan's Column depicting Roman soldiers and their horses is a unique monument from the era of Trajan's wars in Dacia.
The English writer Jean M. Auel described her version of this event in one of the books of her series of novels Children of the Earth, which is called Valley of the Horses. Finding herself alone in a cave on the edge of an inhabited world, the Cro-Magnon girl Eila took in a small horse and raised it. Then she learned to ride it, and when the horse had a foal, she raised him too. Then Ayla found a man of her biological type and … taught her many interesting things, and she taught him to ride a horse.
"The Way Through the Plains" - tells about the long journey of Eila and her beloved Jandalar to his tribe. In general, the books in this series are pretty funny. And Eila invented the spear thrower, and tamed the horses before anyone else. But in general, the series of novels "Children of the Earth" is very informative.
In total, the series includes as many as six multi-page novels: The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of the Horses, The Hunters of Mammoths, The Hearth of the Mammoth, The Path Through the Plain, and Protected by the Stone. In fact, this is an encyclopedia of primitive history, since Jean Auell is not just a writer, but also a scientist, and much of her novels are just a copy of various monographs. The only drawback of the novel is the obvious overabundance of erotic scenes, but there is nothing you can do about it. Although, on the other hand, what else could the people of primitive times do at their leisure?
Among the Christian saints there are no beast-headed "gods", this is the "privilege" of paganism. But there are no rules without exceptions. Saint Christopher became such in the pantheon of Christian saints. There are no saints with the heads of a cow or a dog, but there is a saint who wishes to become a horse. It says a lot … Wall fresco from the cathedral in Sviyazhsk.
"Alosha", "Kaval", "Cheval" and "Far" …
In any case, the horse was domesticated and - judging by the burials with the horse (this is the "conspiracy of paleontologists" has ended and the "conspiracy of archaeologists" has begun!), It happened in the region … of the southern Russian steppes! The very same word "horse" the Eastern Slavs borrowed from the Türks, which sounded like "alosha". Both those and others were in close contact with each other precisely in this region, so that the interpenetration of cultures took place, of course. But the words "horse", "mare", "stallion" are considered to be words of purely Slavic origin, with their roots going back to the ancient Indo-European proto-language.
Among the warriors of the terracotta army in the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, there was such a chariot drawn by four horses.
In Italian, a horse is a caval, hence a cavalier, cavalry; in Spanish - cabal, therefore - caballero, in French - cheval, hence the chevalier, that is, a horseman, a cavalryman. Therefore, when Cardinal Richelieu in "The Three Musketeers" by A. Dumas addresses D'Artagnan: "Chevalier D'Artagnan!" But in Arabic, the horse is called "Far", respectively, the art of riding was called "Furusiyya", but they also called their knights "Faris", that is, horsemen!
The Arabs also met horses very early on. This illustration is from the General History of Jami al-Tawarih, 1305-1314. the prophet Muhammad admonishes his family before the battle of Badr and they are all on horseback. (Khalili Collections, Tabriz, Iran)
