Orlat Battle Plaque\'s Importance

[MeinPanzer]

What we have is the scabbard slide showing up in both Chinese and Altai cultures at the same time. Here is an Altai plaque showing the slide:

It's the companion piece to the more famous "tree of life" plaque. Rudenko attributed it to the 6th century BC. (see Rudenko, pp. 29, 36, 43; and Jettmar, pp. 209-213) Alekseev and Barkova give a date of 5th to 4th century BC. (see Golden Deer, pp. 290-290) So the date is either arguable or can be taken on average at the 5th century BC.

This plaque, like all the objects in the Siberian Collection, were collected across a large area of eastern Asia. It and its mirror plaque are associated with the tree plaques only because they are similar in shape, are gold, and were assembled in the same collection. The general features of such belt plaques, however, were shared by nomads around a huge area of northeastern Asia for centuries. The tree of life plaque is certainly from the Altai or that region, as it matches 5th-4th c. BC Pazyryk stylistically and in costume, hairstyle, and equipment.

This plaque, however, has been examined more closely in recent years and has been determined to be a 3rd-1st c. BC product of Northern China, and the Ordos region in particular (Wu En, "On the Origin of Bronze Belt Plaques of Ancient Nomads in Northern China," in Chinese Archaeology 3 (2003): 186-92; Emma C. Bunker, “Significant Changes in Iconography and Technology among Ancient China’s Northwestern Pastoral Neighbors from the Fourth to the First Century B.C.," in Bulletin of the Asia Institute 6 (1992): 109-111). Firstly, the stylistic treatment of the foliage and figures depicted matches that of numerous Ordos plaques, and the depiction of the horse's hooves in an upward position, the so-called "flying gallop" motif, parallels depictions in China from the Qin and Western Han periods. Secondly, the details of costume and equipment match exactly other depictions on Ordos belt plaques: namely, looser, puffier trousers worn with short boots, rather than the more slender, high boots depicted in anthropomorphic representations from the Altai; long hair tied back in a knot rather than shorter, bushier hair; and the decoration of horse equipment with tassles. That this was produced in northern China is all the more probable because almost exact copies of other buckles from the Siberian collection have been found in the Ordos region in 3rd-1st c. BC contexts.

Therefore, there is no evidence for the use of the scabbard slide in the Altai prior to the earliest examples.

Now we need an illustration and accurate dating of the Chinese find, including sources.

To give just a couple of examples, there is the scabbard slide from Tomb 2717, Chungzhoulu, Hunan province, dating mid 5th to early 4th c. BC, and the slide from the same period from Tomb 25, Yangtianhu, Hunan province. Trousdale enumerates several other examples on pages 11-8.

I'd rather not believe the Chinese lived in a non-horse-riding void until the Warring States period. They had actual-physical contact with northwestern steppe tribes early on. Mencius tells us that Zhou Wen (1152-1056BC and founder of the Western Zhou Dynasty) was a "man of the Western Yi," a steppe tribe.

There were various nomadic tribes living around the Chinese, but these were not horse-riding: they are mentioned in Chinese sources as fighting with chariots and infantry, but never cavalry, and there is no archaeological evidence for them fighting on horseback before their assimilation by the Zhou (see Jaroslav Prushek, Chinese statelets and the northern barbarians in the period 1400-300 B.C. (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences: Prague; W. Reidel Publishing Co.: Dordrecht, 1971)); both literary and archaeological evidence point to the Chinese adoption of horseback riding only in the 4th c. BC (H.G. Creel, "The Role of the Horse in Chinese History," in American Historical Review 70, 3 (1965): 647-72; C.S. Goodrich, "Riding Astride and The Saddle in Ancient China," in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44, 2 (1984): 279-306; Nicola Di Cosmo, "The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 912).

Then we have the famous "Chinese bride" chariot found at Pazyryk. The chariot has a steppe origin but was obviously used by a neighboring culture.

Do you mean the carriage from Pazyryk barrow 5? If so, what about it indicates any links with China? It's a steppe vehicle. But even if it was Chinese, that wouldn't tell us anything about whether the contemporary Chinese rode horses or not.

By 800BC we have Chinese metallic items depicting riders hunting, including people who looked like Saka-- "Images featured bearded Europoids with prominent long noses, thin lips, and rounded eyes." (Kelekna, p.138)

From where in China, and what culture? If you are referring to the bronze ring decorated with hunters on horseback from Nanshan'gen, then these were non-Chinese steppe nomads of the Upper Xiajiadian culture who lived well beyond the bounds of Zhou civilization, from whom they were separated by the non-horse riding, non-Chinese peoples often referred to by the term Rong in Chinese sources.

In sum, the earliest finds of scabbard slides come from China and date to before the Chinese began to ride horses, while the scabbard slide only appears outside of China in the 3rd c. BC or so. The invention of the scabbard slide cannot be directly linked to a non-Chinese origin or to wearing a sword while riding on horseback.