Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

Thanks for the informative post, Jan.

In some of the above posts, I referred to these rein holders as such, although often called "bow-shaped objects." If we look at your post, we discover rein holders hung from belts on "Saian Altai deer stones." These deer stones, along with the chariot petroglyps, present a marked route from the Minusinsk Basin, upriver along the Yennisey, through the Sayan Mountains (aka "Saian"), and straight southeast through Mongolia to the eastern edge of the Gobi Altai, and finally directly south to Hetao (bend in the Yellow River).

After I finished the first 3 posts on the "Q Migration," I was hoping I wasn't embarrassing myself. Just before the 4th post, I received William Honeychurch's, Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire, (Springer, 2015) What a relief! Honeychurch concurs with Wu (2013), noting, "In fact, the main evidence that Wu provides for a northwestern introduction (via Mongolia) rather than a western one (via Xinjiang-Gansu) is that the particular toolset associated with Shang period chariot burials, including steppe style bronze knives, whetstones, and curious bow-shaped objects, are known only from two other contemporary contexts: Karasuk period burials in Minusinsk and from carvings on the Mongolian deer stones." (Honeychurch, p. 192)

Jan, you were right on target. And speaking of archery, I've spent 15 years at drawing composite steppe bows. The idea that these "bow-shaped" objects could be related to archery is something invented by the unknowledgeable. I read Mingyu Teng's PDF on the subject (as you linked us to). While he has the right idea, even the wide-based rein holders were not necessarily always strapped to the front of a chariot. All rein holders were designed to be attached to the human body, just above the waist at the lower abdomen, and configured in a concave fashion expressly for this purpose. Some wide-based versions were attached to the carriage-front simply because they worked better than narrow-based ones. Nice to see at least four of them were found in Fu Hao's tomb.


   
I may have posted this before, but here is one of the rein holders from Fu Hao's tomb. It's 15.7 inches long, certainly not something you would attach to a nice light composite bow for no particular purpose. Note her four bronze mirrors, all of them of Andronovo origin... as is the Karasuk knife.

What is important, at least to me, is the slight cultural difference between this northern group (predominantly Y-Haplogroup Q and linked to the Zhou) and the western group still stalled back in Western Xinjiang and mostly Y-Haplogroup R1a1. Also, according to Honeychurch, we need to reevaluate the Baifu burials into a new context of horse procurement. I'll address the increased need for horses in another post. Again, thanks.