Horses And Humans, Crows, She-wolfs And Nation Builders
Days turn into Nights turn into days again. Waves beat on the shores, the moon pulls and the Sun rises and falls. Monks chant and meditate, get drunk and fight over petty points of order. Gurus lead their communities in their endless round of escape attempts from this vessel.
Women get impregnated by gods and angels while their men folk listen, scratch their heads, beat the women and then go on about their business. The baby is left out to the elements and is carried by some stream to a shore where wolves and birds tend to the child who returns to become a menial in the house of the king. He proves himself to be a great horseman and hunter with a bow, is forced to work in the stables and then rises up with the aid of loyal companions to slaughter the evil king and become in turn the founder of dynasties that are supported by a coterie of loyal warrior brethren. This clan or wolf pack then become the new nobility and conquer the surrounding peoples. It is a tale told over and over in the founding myths across Asia.
Why wolves and birds? Birds usually crows are known spirit carriers of messages from the gods. Wolves are the model hunters. Forming packs that can defeat any other animals by their cunning and teamwork. It is this model of the alpha male that has provided the example for all hierarchies through history. A group of male hunters band around a successful leader. He has the wolves cunning and the crow’s vision being able to fly over the human condition and commune with the heavens.
Why the horse? Horses and humans have been allied for millenia conquering vast spaces together as a team the horse accepts the dominant position of the rider there is no biological reason for horses to want to accept humans. It would not seem to have any basis in a monkeys past to become horse riders, yet here we have this teamwork. I come from a family of horse people and the love of horses dominates the females in my family. They have only passing relations with men but with horses they have relations that go on for life. It is because as I see it the horse is always there, reliable, non judgemental. As a child I spent many an hour watching the horses interact. I would sit on the back of one and simply observe. The stallion if he was there would be constantly herding and chasing away other males, protecting his interest in the females and mounting them when they were in heat. His was a hectic round of battle and vigilance. The gelded males were relativly passive, they would form friendships play games such as sword fights with sticks they would put in their mouths and spar with one another, or they would scratch each others backs. They were socially not much different from the females except they were seen as irritants to the stallion to be chased away. The females would interact with one another as a sort of sisterhood, bearing the colts, swatting flies off one another head to tail. Mostly I remember then hanging out in the shade of trees in the hottest part of the day durring the summers. They would graze separately in the early morning and then gather in the mid day to socialize and swat flies off one another. Horses stand all the time, they almost never lie down except to roll occasionally in the water or the dirt to get rid of flies.
They had their mild hierarchy, the stallion if he was around was the testosterone dictated master, but when he was not around, as often he was kept separate to keep him from biting and kicking the other horses then the elder gelding ruled. He had pride of place. It was a subtle thing. More a respect than an actual rule. We called him chief and he was. More of a benign ruler, where as the stallion was the hard taskmaster and if there was the slightest challenge he was there to do battle. Showing the whites of his eyes, barring his teeth and charging the competition real or imagined. He was fun to ride. You never knew when he would go off on you to chase a female. I had him once roll out from under me in a river with a saddle on his back. He just wanted to roll. I kicked and hit him and swore at him but he didn’t care. But mostly like all the horses he accepted human direction and authority. Interesting.
Horses will work with people. They like humans it seems and we like them. It has been the case for thousands of years in the great Asian steppes. When did this relationship first develop?
This is a list from an article in Discovery about the domestication time frame known for animals. Below it are excerpts from an article about research on what may be the earliest known horse riders central Asian Kazakhs from 6000 BC, or whomever lived at that location back then.
“Tamed Kingdom
Humans have domesticated numerous animal species over the past 12 millennium, beginning with man’s best friend, the dog. Here is a sampling of roughly when and where the taming of some familiar critters occurred.
10,000 B.C.
• Dog: Israel/Iraq
7000 B.C.
• Goat: Iran
• Sheep: northeast Syria/southeast Turkey
• Pig: northeast Syria/southeast Turkey
6000 B.C.
• Cat: northeast Africa
• Cattle: Turkey
• Chicken: southeast Asia
4000 B.C.
• Horse: Eurasian steppe
3500 B.C.
• Donkey: North Africa
• Dromedary camel: southern Arabia
• Bactrian camel: south Asia 3000 B.C.
• Duck: southeast Asia
2500 B.C.
• Guinea pig: Andes
A.D. 100
• Turkey: Mexico
A.D. 500
• Honeybee: Europe
A.D. 1000
• Goldfish: China
A.D. 1500
• Rabbit: Europe
Living World / Prehistoric Culture First to Ride
Archaeologist Sandra Olsen doesn’t care much for living horses—it’s their bones she likes. And no wonder: they may have led her to one of the most important finds in the history of humankind
by William Speed Weed, From the March 2002 issue, published online March 1, 2002
Sandra Olsen stands knee-deep in summer grass on a sprawling plain in northern Kazakhstan, peering at horse herders creeping ant like over a golden hill miles away. Kazakhs have roamed this cold dry grassland on horseback for centuries and are renowned for their ability to shoot arrows with accuracy while bouncing atop galloping steeds. As Olsen watches mammoth clouds gathering on the horizon, she envisions a time thousands of years ago when these plains were inhabited by hardy hunter-gatherers who lived on horse meat but did not know how to ride the horses they hunted. She muses on how radically their world must have changed when one of them finally climbed aboard a horse, tamed it, and rode like the wind. “Prior to horseback riding, most people carried all their cargo on their shoulders, or they were restricted to using boats along rivers and coastlines,” says Olsen, an archaeologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. “Horses were swift of foot, could easily support one or two human passengers, carry heavy loads, and survive on very poor quality vegetation or fodder. They were our first form of rapid transit.”
Temporarily freed from a small corral, Kazakh horses test their legs. “No animal has made a greater impact on societies than the horse,” says archaeologist Sandra Olsen.
Ultimately, the taming of horses turned out to be a momentous turning point in human history. “Horses caused the first globalization,” says Melinda Zeder, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “They allowed cultures to grow from isolated pockets to interconnected spheres of influence.” Archaeologists generally agree that this historical upheaval began in the only region on Earth where horses survived in significant numbers after the Ice Age: the vast Eurasian steppe that stretches from the Carpathian Mountains in Hungary to the Alta’ Mountains in Mongolia thousands of miles away. Researchers also agree that domestication occurred before 3000 B.C., when horses suddenly started showing up in distant places like Turkey and Switzerland. But one of the most enduring archaeological mysteries has yet to be resolved. Who were the original horsemen, and what inspired them to straddle a 1,000-pound beast that could kick out their brains with one blow?
Every summer Olsen returns to this spot in the heart of the Eurasian steppe, hoping to prove that her version of history is correct. Beneath her black Reebok’s and the knee-high grass lies a village that a primitive people known as the Botai lived in 6,000 years ago. Excavations at this site, dubbed Krasnyi Yar, and another site less than 100 miles to the west, have revealed that the Botai endured a harsh existence. They lived in pit houses dug into the ground and half-covered with some structure that has since rotted away. During winter, which lasts nearly nine months of the year, they dressed in the furs of various small mammals, huddled around fires, and ate horse meat. And they left behind some clues: Their pit houses are chock-full of bones, 90 percent of them from horses.
What’s not immediately evident is whether those horses were wild or tame, or both. But after eight years of careful detective work, Olsen thinks she has deciphered the tale the bones have to tell. The Botai people not only hunted and herded horses for food, she says, they also used them as a means of transport. If she’s right, then she has found the earliest-known horsemen and, quite possibly, the inventors of riding.
Humans have hunted horses across the Eurasian steppe for at least 100,000 years. Analysis of bones found at two sites near Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, suggests that 6,000 years ago, the Botai people were the first to turn their prey into a means of transport.
In the process of measuring the Botai horse bones, Olsen says she found other, very large clues staring her in the face: “Full skeletons of horses, entire vertebral columns, and pelvises. The Botai didn’t just leave behind horse parts. They’ve got whole horses.” Olsen is tall and fit enough to lug water crates, dig trenches, and perform the various chores of running a dig in the middle of the wide-open steppe. But the muscle power required to heft giant horse bones on and off the measuring table made her think of the Botai in the same spot 6,000 years ago: How far would they have been willing to move whole horses? “I don’t think they went out, miles overland on foot, killed a horse, and dragged the whole 1,000-pound thing back here,” she says. They’d more likely butcher a wild horse in the field, divide up the meat for easy carrying, and leave heavy and non-nutritious parts behind. In that case, she argues, you wouldn’t find the spine and hips in the Botai village pit houses. “Yet we find them,” says Olsen, who suggests that the full skeletons are the remains of domesticated horses as well as wild horses hauled home whole by means of living horses. She calls this bit of reasoning “the schlep effect.”
The schlep effect should also extend to other materials. Olsen is curious about quartzite stone scrapers she found at Krasnyi Yar, so she has sent out graduate students on geological surveys to find the quarry, which, even after 6,000 years, should still be visible. They haven’t found it, and if it turns out to be a great distance away—more than 50 miles—she’ll argue that the Botai must have had horses to go so far on a regular basis. But stone chips and flakes unearthed in recent excavations indicate that the Botai were carrying home chunks of rock larger than a human could carry long-distance.
“They probably had a simple bridle made of hide or hemp,” she says, drawing a little schematic of a rope looped around the front teeth of a horse’s skull. They might also have had lassos, whips, tethers, and hobbles of the same material. Most of the tackle we now associate with horses, from saddles to stirrups, are sophistication’s that were invented well into the history of riding. Hundreds of jawbones have tiny rubbing marks on them. These marks aren’t evidence of riding, Olsen says. That part of the jaw is covered in flesh when a horse is alive. But Olsen thinks the Botai may have used tools fashioned out of horse jawbones as a tool to make their riding ropes.
She grabs a boomerang-shaped horse jaw to explain. “This is a thong smoother,” she says, pointing to the inside curve of the boomerang. “Using a scanning electron microscope, we’ve looked at this notch on dozens of these jawbones, and they’ve all been worn down by the rubbing of some sort of leather,” she says. “If you put a strip of hide in the notch and pull it back and forth, any bendy piece will straighten out into strong usable leather,” she explains. Without a thong smoother, the longest piece of straight leather one can make is the same length as a horsehide, about six feet. With a thong smoother, the hide can be cut in a spiral, then straightened to create a strip of leather a dozen yards long.
Olsen points out that the Botai had more thong smoothers than cooking pots. “It’s a regular thong factory out here. I don’t think they built their homes with them.” Botai houses are 175-square-foot pits that would have been covered with thatch or adobe mud. “It’s a deductive argument to say that they’re making horse tackle. But they used them for something,” she says.
Most archaeologists dismiss as hindsight the notion that a people invented something because they knew the range of its benefits. Like the inventors of gunpowder, the cotton gin, or the Internet, the first horseback riders likely had no idea of the power of their discovery. Perhaps it was merely a daydreamer loafing in summer grass who envisioned mounting a horse. Perhaps it was a daredevil showing off to his friends, leaping from a tree onto the back of a colt and hanging on to the mane for his life. And, muses Olsen as the distant horse herders emerge from the storm, “perhaps it happened here.”
Anyway I don’t know, perhaps it was in that area. From the horses viewpoint perhaps it was a deal they made to get humans to stop hunting them for food. Perhaps some extra-wise horse came up with the idea that if they could get a human to see horses as other than an easy meal, then perhaps they would be able to coexist. The trick would be to convince a human to climb aboard instead of aiming an arrow at the horses heart. Horses had to find a way to get humans to fall in love with them. It is interesting that there are tales of humans like Alexander and his beloved Bucephalus, whom nobody could ride but Alexander because he realized that Bucephalus was affraid of his shadow.
Pegasus the winged horse used by Bellerophon to defeat the Chimera and the Amazons. Interesting that Pegasus allowed Bellerophon to ride him upon seeing he had a bridle given to him by the goddess Athena.
Moderns forget how much a man was associated with his horse. As a child I was taught to ride at about age 4. I learned to ride and never really learned how to ride a bike. I taught myself when I was 19, just as I taught myself to drive a car. Horseback riding was for me second nature as with most people of the steppes today. But all famous generals in history were associated with their horses.
Cesar had his horse.
This from Suetonius as excerpted on a web site called “The Pet Museum”
“Caesar’s horse
The ancient historian Suetonius, whose Lives of the Caesars makes for a very diverting read (he assures us that Caligula smelled strongly of goat), has this to say about Julius Caesar’s most unusual horse:
“He rode a remarkable horse, too, with feet that were almost human; for its hoofs were cloven in such a way as to look like toes. This horse was foaled on his own place, and since the soothsayers had declared that it foretold the rule of the world for its master, he reared it with the greatest care, and was the first to mount it, for it would endure no other rider. Afterwards, too, he dedicated a statue of it before the temple of Venus Genetrix (my note: Julius Caesar’s family was said to be descended from the goddess Venus). ”
It’s also said he called his horse… Toes.”
General Lee with Traveler.
This is a rather long excerpt
“General R. E. Lee’s War-Horses, Traveller.
Southern Historical Society Papers.
Vol. XVIII. Richmond, Va., January-December. 1890.
The following communication from Major Thomas L. Broun, Charleston, Kanawha county, West Virginia, appeared in the Richmond Dispatch August 10, 1886:
“In view of the fact that great interest is felt in the monument about to be erected to General Lee, and that many are desirous that his war-horse should be represented in the monument, and as I once owned this horse, I herewith give you some items respecting this now famous war-horse, Traveller.
“He was raised by Mr. Johnston, near the Blue Sulphur Springs, in Greenbrier county, Virginia (now West Virginia); was of the ‘ Gray Eagle’ stock, and, as a colt, took the first premium under the name of ‘Jeff Davis’ at the Lewisburg fairs for each of the years 1859 and 1860. He was four years old in the spring of 1861. When the Wise legion was encamped on Sewell mountain, opposing the advance of the Federal Army under Rosecranz, in the fall of 1861, I was major to the Third regiment of infantry in that legion, and my brother, Captain Joseph M. Broun, was quartermaster to the same regiment.
“I authorized my brother to purchase a good serviceable horse of the best Greenbrier stock for our use during the war.
“After much inquiry and search he came across the horse above mentioned, and I purchased him for $175 (gold value), in the fall of 1861, from Captain James W. Johnston, son of the Mr. Johnston first above mentioned. When the Wise legion was encamped about Meadow Bluff and Big Sewell mountains, I rode this horse, which was then greatly admired in camp for his rapid, springy walk, his high spirit, bold carriage, and muscular strength.
“He needed neither whip nor spur, and would walk his five or six miles an hour over the rough mountain roads of Western Virginia with his rider sitting firmly in the saddle and holding him in check by a tight rein, such vim and eagerness did he manifest to go right ahead so soon as he was mounted.
“When General Lee took command of the Wise legion and Floyd brigade that were encamped at and near Big Sewell mountains, in the fall of 1861, he first saw this horse, and took a great fancy to it. He called it his colt, and said that he would use it before the war was over. Whenever the General saw my brother on this horse he had something pleasant to say to him about ‘my colt,’ as he designated this horse. As the winter approached, the climate in the West Virginia mountains caused Rosecranz’s army to abandon its position on Big Sewell and retreat westward. General Lee was thereupon ordered to South Carolina. The Third regiment of the Wise legion was subsequently detached from the army in Western Virginia and ordered to the South Carolina coast, where it was known as the Sixtieth Virginia regiment, under Colonel Starke. Upon seeing my brother on this horse near Pocotalipo, in South Carolina, General Lee at once recognized the horse, and again inquired of him pleasantly about ‘his colt.’
“My brother then offered him the horse as a gift, which the General promptly declined, and at the same time remarked: ‘If you will willingly sell me the horse, I will gladly use it for a week or so to learn its qualities.’ Thereupon my brother had the horse sent to General Lee’s stable. In about a week the horse was returned to my brother, with a note from General Lee stating that the animal suited him, but that he could not longer use so valuable a horse in such times, unless it was his own; that if he (my brother) would not sell, please to keep the horse, with many thanks. This was in February, 1862. At that time I was in Virginia, on the sick list from a long and severe attack of camp fever, contracted in the campaign on Big Sewell mountains. My brother wrote me of General Lee’s desire to have the horse, and asked me what he should do. I replied at once: ‘If he will not accept it, then sell it to him at what it cost me.’ He then sold the horse to General Lee for $200 in currency, the sum of $25 having been added by General Lee to the price I paid for the horse in September, 1861, to make up the depreciation in our currency from September, 1861, to February, 1862.
“In 1868 General Lee wrote to my brother, stating that this horse had survived the war–was known as ‘Traveller’ (spelling the word with a double l in good English style), and asking for its pedigree, which was obtained, as above mentioned, and sent by my brother to General Lee.”
This is an excerpt about General Washington’s horses from Valley Forge Historical Society.
“Mr. John Hunter, an English visitor to Mt. Vernon in 1785, in a letter to a friend makes the following reference to the horses:
“When dinner was over, we visited the General’s stables, saw his magnificent horses, among them “Old Nelson,” now twenty-two years of age, that carried the General almost always during the war. “Blueskin,” another fine old horse, next to him, had that honor. They had heard the roaring of many a cannon in their time. “Blueskin” was not the favorite on account of his not standing fire so well as venerable “Old Nelson.” The General makes no manner of use of them now. He keeps them in a nice stable, where they feed away at their ease for their past services.’”
My mother was the same way with her show horses, “Apache Chief” a paint was black and white, had an easy disposition and a slow steady gallop. He was her favorite for trickriding. My mother did stunts on horesback in the rodeos in her youth. She still rides even now daily in her eighties. When Chief was too old to ride he was allowed to go out to pasture and was treated with respect as were all of her horses as they grew old.
This is a traditional value among horse people. They treat their riding horses with respect and honor. Farmers and more pedestrian users of horses would sell their older horses for meat and horsemeat is still popular in France and Belgium in particular. But for horse lovers like my mother that would be an anathema, like eating your relatives when they were to old to work.
But we should not forget that for most of recorded history the horse has been the main means of transportation in the world. They may be again as we run out of dinosaour bones.
Tags: Birds and She Wolfs Aid Foundlings. Founding Myths, Horses and Humans In History