A Historical Update On Humans Riding Horses

[Ozymandias]

I'm a bit of a stickler about historicity - Like "Bronze" being a "Tech," which humans only began using about 2,000 BCE - 2,000 years after the game starts. Iron was 1,200 BCE. And we have so many great Stone Age Units! (And, Furthermore the invention of the bow precedes History.)

Now, back to Horses, from the new National Geographic:

"New evidence from ancient skeletons shows the earliest signs of horseback riding among these humans, who giddy-upped some 5,000 years ago. These early cowpokes, thundering through present-day Europe, didn't look like Annie Oakley or John Wayne—but they likely used horses for advantages in herding, exploration, and trading."

(Similarly, it is worth remembering that Chariots weren't invented by any Civ at all. They first appeared in the Western Eurasian steppe about 3,500 BCE.)

- New Tech Tree, anyone?

 

[Quintillus]

(Similarly, it is worth remembering that Chariots weren't invented by any Civ at all. They first appeared in the Western Eurasian steppe about 3,500 BCE.)

Well, if you put it like that, it sounds like Chariots just magically appeared around 3500 BC, a gift from the gods! Surely someone invented them, even if it was a steppe people who didn't have a writing system to document their discovery?

I'm not sure that I see an incompatibility between horses being used for herding, exploration, and trading in 3000 BC, and the Civ3 tech tree. It sounds like chariots before horseback riding is still the proper order, and while most Civ3 civs will discover horseback riding after 3000 BC, in-game it represents people-on-horses being useful from a military standpoint, which would likely be somewhat later.

I'll agree that perhaps the bow should be common knowledge at the game start, but I don't follow the complaints about Bronze Working and Iron Working. The game doesn't try to pretend iron didn't exist in 4000 BC, just that humans weren't making large-scale use of it until much later (particularly for sword-making).

But perhaps you're saying there could be a lot more detail in the Ancient Age? There is likely a mod for that...

 

[Ozymandias]

To the best of my long-ago-recalled about such things, Chariots preceding Horseback riding occurred because horses in the wild were too small to ride into battle (hence the essentially domestic uses of 5,000 BCE) and had to be bred into the ultimate top-of-the-line Medieval Charger, I often "toy" with an Ancient Tech of, "Large Animal Domestication" (which works for elephants as well ) then another Tech called, "War Animal Breeding."

- AS A COMPLETE ASIDE: I have all of H. Balck's / Yang Liu's Donkey-pulled Chariots and Elephants, & I think I'm going to repost them

 

[timerover51]

The Hyksos took Egypt using chariots somewhere around 1700 BC, and the Egyptians were using them in warfare under Thutmose III at the Battle of Megiddo, circa 1450 BC. However, the Sumerians were using two-wheeled and four-wheeled carts drawn by 4 onagers in warfare circa 2450 BC. The Chariot may well have been developed from them using the larger and stronger horses available on the steppe. The first army using larger numbers of horsemen along with chariots were the Assyrians around 840 BC.

The earliest depiction of a horseman from Egyptian records dates to the Battle of Kadesh under Ramesses circa 1274 BC. The depiction is probably of a Hittite rider.

 

[Quintillus]

To the best of my long-ago-recalled about such things, Chariots preceding Horseback riding occurred because horses in the wild were too small to ride into battle (hence the essentially domestic uses of 5,000 BCE) and had to be bred into the ultimate top-of-the-line Medieval Charger, I often "toy" with an Ancient Tech of, "Large Animal Domestication" (which works for elephants as well ) then another Tech called, "War Animal Breeding."

That progressively-larger-horse-breeding does ring a bell. And to think we herald Darwin as the father of evolution, we were selectively breeding horses millennia ago!

- AS A COMPLETE ASIDE: I have all of H. Balck's / Yang Liu's Donkey-pulled Chariots and Elephants, & I think I'm going to repost them

Let's stop the presses on that one for a moment. As far as I am aware, the official CFC position remains that we should respect cases where an author removed their work intentionally, and not re-upload that work, as was discussed in this thread. Blue Monkey's post #26 in that thread sums it up nicely.

I'm not very motivated to stand on a hill attempting to change that because I basically agree that we should respect members' wishes in that regard.

The Hyksos took Egypt using chariots somewhere around 1700 BC, and the Egyptians were using them in warfare under Thutmose III at the Battle of Megiddo, circa 1450 BC. However, the Sumerians were using two-wheeled and four-wheeled carts drawn by 4 onagers in warfare circa 2450 BC. The Chariot may well have been developed from them using the larger and stronger horses available on the steppe. The first army using larger numbers of horsemen along with chariots were the Assyrians around 840 BC.

The earliest depiction of a horseman from Egyptian records dates to the Battle of Kadesh under Ramesses circa 1274 BC. The depiction is probably of a Hittite rider.

Interesting, I had not heard of the use of onagar-drawn carts in warfare previously. Do you know where I could read more about that?

 

[timerover51]

That progressively-larger-horse-breeding does ring a bell. And to think we herald Darwin as the father of evolution, we were selectively breeding horses millennia ago!

Interesting, I had not heard of the use of onagar-drawn carts in warfare previously. Do you know where I could read more about that?

Mankind has been selectively breeding plants and animals for millennia. Consider the potato, corn/maize, the tomato, dairy cattle, and the various sheep and goat breeds, not to mention dogs and cats.

As for the onager carts, the Wikipedia article on the Sumerians is reasonably accurate, but my information is derived from The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands by Yigael Yadin and Technology in the Ancient World by Henry Hodges. The onager is a species of wild ass, a bit larger than the donkey, but smaller than the horse.

The horse the steppe dwellers were working with was probably the Tarpan, which became extinct in the early 1900s. Attempts have been made to breed back to it.

 

[ThesaurusRex]

I'm a bit of a stickler about historicity - Like "Bronze" being a "Tech," which humans only began using about 2,000 BCE - 2,000 years after the game starts. Iron was 1,200 BCE. And we have so many great Stone Age Units! (And, Furthermore the invention of the bow precedes History.)

Bows in general, yes, but war bows a la a professional archer class sort of coincided with complex polities. You don't exactly need to train your entire life to pull a 90+ lb bow if you're just going to use it to hunt or even participate in raids/defense. Most bows throughout history topped at around 50 lbs. You could consider the stock Archer unit to represent one of these first professionally trained soldiering types.

To the best of my long-ago-recalled about such things, Chariots preceding Horseback riding occurred because horses in the wild were too small to ride into battle (hence the essentially domestic uses of 5,000 BCE) and had to be bred into the ultimate top-of-the-line Medieval Charger, I often "toy" with an Ancient Tech of, "Large Animal Domestication" (which works for elephants as well ) then another Tech called, "War Animal Breeding."

Not so much too small as a mix between their backs weren't suited enough (which I don't know how true that is, as colonial powers in Africa made use of zebra cavalry but maybe they gave them a rest every now and then) and very few people in their right mind would consider it a good idea. Horses are a lot more fickle and ornery than they seem and the semi-wild tarpans of ancient herders would have been even moreso.

Also worth mentioning that horses weren't even domesticated for any kind of work, initially, but as livestock: they complemented the Near Eastern cattle herds that were then unadapted for the Pontic-Caspian steppes by being more cold-hardy (meaning they didn't need to be barned/taken into your house) and using their hooves to break ice to get to water and dig snow to get at the fresh tips of grass that the cattle can then finish off without hurting their nose (which they use to shovel snow instead of hooves). Being hindgut fermenters, they could also take advantage of a larger expanse and variety of less-nutritious forage while a ruminant is specialized in getting as much as it can from a more ideal selection of plants.

All that of course is from David W. Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel and Language.

 

[WildWeazel]

So what I'm hearing is add a couple hundred more turns and push the start date back into the neolithic

 

[Ozymandias]

Indeed! Terra Fantasia's Era 1 is divided into 3 "sub-Eras:" Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, with Era 1 ending with Gunpowder; I'm trying to compress much into 4 Eras. Thanks, in part, to @ThesaurusRex's comments, each Culture Group will begin with its own, distinct Warrior, with more sophisticated, and differentiated, Unit types being introduced with the Tech Warrior Code ...

 

[ThesaurusRex]

Indeed! Terra Fantasia's Era 1 is divided into 3 "sub-Eras:" Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, with Era 1 ending with Gunpowder; I'm trying to compress much into 4 Eras. Thanks, in part, to @ThesaurusRex's comments, each Culture Group will begin with its own, distinct Warrior, with more sophisticated, and differentiated, Unit types being introduced with the Tech Warrior Code ...

Can you imagine if the stock game allowed you to add entirely new eras??

I wonder if enough .exe shenanigans could do the trick...

 

[Ozymandias]

Can you imagine if the stock game allowed you to add entirely new eras??

I wonder if enough .exe shenanigans could do the trick...

Sadly, no: the matter has been looked into a number of times, including, I believe, by Flintlock. There's just too much hard coding in place.

 

[Plotinus]

I have to say that I'm having difficulty imagining a less scary weapon of war than a four-wheeled cart pulled by onagers.

 

[Vuldacon]

I have to say that I'm having difficulty imagining a less scary weapon of war than a four-wheeled cart pulled by onagers.

... Thanks, I got a good laugh out of that.

 

[Ozymandias]

Let's stop the presses on that one for a moment. As far as I am aware, the official CFC position remains that we should respect cases where an author removed their work intentionally, and not re-upload that work, as was discussed in this thread. Blue Monkey's post #26 in that thread sums it up nicely.

Having looked into this long ago, I believe that the Forum Rules state that anything posted here - insofar as no copyright infringements are entailed (H.Balck; Firefox and therefrom TopGun) - are considered to be in the Public Domain.

I'm not very motivated to stand on a hill attempting to change that because I basically agree that we should respect members' wishes in that regard.

That has basically been the Rule of Thumb for Many Moons now ... although I have a list of personal exceptions to that.

Interesting, I had not heard of the use of onagar-drawn carts in warfare previously. Do you know where I could read more about that?

The Chariot in Egyptian Warfare; Donkeys, Mules and Onagers: Their History, Uses and Behavior