03-22-2018, 04:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-22-2018, 04:37 PM by Michael Kerr.)
Alanus wrote:
After WW2 between the years 1947 to 1949 Rudenko then opened the kurgans 2 to 8. Another 47 horse bodies were found but only the ones from kurgans 1, 2 and 5 were fully preserved and partly preserved bodies from kurgan 3. Vitt was again called in to examine this wider selection of horses and retracted his earlier suggestions after examining the larger sample and admitted that the larger horses were not that much bigger than the smaller horses and thought that the larger horses were a result of being castrated at an earlier age (18 months to 2 years), it seems all the horses buried were castrated. He suggested that earlier castration increases the period of cannon-bone growth and helps towards the development of finer bones in the legs.
Just another point which to my mind is not researched enough with eastern type horses in general is what happened to all the horses that once pulled the war chariots that invaded northern China, the Middle East and Northern India. It is commonly mentioned in Chinese sources according to Naiko Egami who wrote that the Yuezhi bred a carriage horse, the k'uai-t'i which was much appreciated for its manner of running which had a gait similar to a flying amble which was represented in the famous Chinese 2nd century AD bronze statue of the flying horse see below. Even if the horses from Pazyryk were bigger than their chariot horse ancestors they would have remained amblers from birth after centuries of selective breeding for chariotry but the amblers were also good riding horses with a comfortable stride and even Vegetius when he talks about the various breeds of horses makes special mention of the Persian horses which seemed to be his favourite riding horse ( I don't know what happened to the Nissean breed which had been the famed Persian war horse from Achaemenid times described so often by western sources.) He mentions their gait and describes them as ‘ambulatores’ or pacers. It makes me wonder about the horses buried with the carriage in Kurgan 5 of which there were 9 well preserved specimens.
Overall, we are looking at horses smaller than the impression given by Sergei Rudenko in 1953. When he discovered the Pazyryk horses, Rudenko was impressed by their "modern" appearance, likening them to the Akhal teke. He envisioned a long-legged breed, refined, originating in Persia, and imported by the Altai chieftains. I have no idea why Rudenko chose the Akhal teke, other than the fact it was an ancient breed. However, he was looking at dehydrated remains which gave the illusion of "race-horse" refinement. In actuality, the Pazyryk horses were not tall or leggy... even though countless contemporaneous illustrations depict them as near Thoroughbreds
Sorry for going back a bit on this thread but I am not really sure if it was Rudenko who was the culprit in this. The 27 year old Mikael Gryaznov opened Kurgan 1 in 1929 even though Rudenko was in charge of the expedition he seemed to be absent from the opening of the first kurgan. It was Gryaznov’s description of the find and an examination of the bodies of the 10 horses from Kurgan 1 by V.O. Vitt who was chair of Hippology at Moscow University and who later wrote two reports about the bodies, the first in 1937 after examining the bodies in Kurgan 1 and the second in 1952 after examining a larger sample of horses. He noted that there was variation in both the size (calculated withers heights). He classified from the bodies 4 different groupings of Pazyryk horses due to these variations. This original report created a great deal of discussion about the possibility of these horse variations being the result of either trading or raiding, through which the seemingly larger and finer horses could have been obtained. Indeed, this prompted Gryaznov to suggest that the best of the horses belonged to the famous ancient Central Asiatic breed, which were the progenitors of the famous Akhal-Teké breed. It was assumed that the rest of the horses, being smaller and of less striking confirmation, may have been the result of the crossbreeding of the Central Asian type with the small but strong and hardy local horse stock.
After WW2 between the years 1947 to 1949 Rudenko then opened the kurgans 2 to 8. Another 47 horse bodies were found but only the ones from kurgans 1, 2 and 5 were fully preserved and partly preserved bodies from kurgan 3. Vitt was again called in to examine this wider selection of horses and retracted his earlier suggestions after examining the larger sample and admitted that the larger horses were not that much bigger than the smaller horses and thought that the larger horses were a result of being castrated at an earlier age (18 months to 2 years), it seems all the horses buried were castrated. He suggested that earlier castration increases the period of cannon-bone growth and helps towards the development of finer bones in the legs.
Just another point which to my mind is not researched enough with eastern type horses in general is what happened to all the horses that once pulled the war chariots that invaded northern China, the Middle East and Northern India. It is commonly mentioned in Chinese sources according to Naiko Egami who wrote that the Yuezhi bred a carriage horse, the k'uai-t'i which was much appreciated for its manner of running which had a gait similar to a flying amble which was represented in the famous Chinese 2nd century AD bronze statue of the flying horse see below. Even if the horses from Pazyryk were bigger than their chariot horse ancestors they would have remained amblers from birth after centuries of selective breeding for chariotry but the amblers were also good riding horses with a comfortable stride and even Vegetius when he talks about the various breeds of horses makes special mention of the Persian horses which seemed to be his favourite riding horse ( I don't know what happened to the Nissean breed which had been the famed Persian war horse from Achaemenid times described so often by western sources.) He mentions their gait and describes them as ‘ambulatores’ or pacers. It makes me wonder about the horses buried with the carriage in Kurgan 5 of which there were 9 well preserved specimens.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
