[gothic-l] Gothic horses

Fri Apr 5 23:08:11 UTC 2002

Hello Bertil,
I wonder if Lynn White was the same one we quoted
some years ago on Medieval water technologies, 
pumps, dams, mills and things like that.

Well, in that case Lynn based her research on medieval
written records, monestary inventories, "earth books"
and things like that. But if we want to investigate
the situation in the centuries that are of relevance
to our present discussion, we do of course not have access
to written records. (except for the Romans)

There are however data available from archaeology from
the relevant period of the Migration Era, since pollen
and grain analysis allow us to identify the most common
crops. But I do not know what the scores are for oats.
(Oats are the kinds of grains that contains more proteins
than almost any other kind of grain. And in athletics,
human as well as animal, it is not only carbo-hydrates that
are important, but also very much proteins, in order to
build up the muscle subsstance)

The argument you here wish to propagate, viz. your claim 
that Migration Period war horses could not operate
without large daily supplies of oats, does however seem
both undefined as well as contradictory.

First undefined, because you are not being explicit
whether it was just the Roman horses that needed this
daily supply of oats, or whether you also wish to include
the Hunish horses in your proposition. It is also undefined
because we do not know what kinds of horses the Goths of
the Migration Period used. It is clear, however, that the 
Goths, apart from the Huns, were not the only people
in the Black Sea area that used horses. There were
for example also the Sarmatians. We can of course assume
that the Goths, as they settled in their new habitats,
traded horses of the local Sarmatian type. After all,
these were adapted to the local conditions, and probably
the best suited for the area.

Lynn White's statements obviously relate more to the technologies
of Medieval farming than to anything else. For, as we
know - from previous discussions - the invention of the horse
collar brought with it a revolution in European agriculture
technologies sometime in the 13th century, resulting in
the possibility to use horses for plowing the land.
Before that one had to rely on oxen, where the horns
were used to affix the goad for pulling the load.

It is then safe to assume that after the Viking Age
the kinds of horses in use changed, not least through
selective breeding, because the efforts now became focused
on finding horse types that were good at pulling loads.

What you say is also in obvious contradiction to the
information supplied by Einar, viz. that Icelandic horses
live from the foods the horses find through natural grazing
and are not dependent upon regular supplies of special
harvests of oats.

It would also surprise me if the horses used by the
Asiatic Steppe Nomads are not also pretty much self-supplied
food-wise.

Well, maybe your proposition then ought to be reformulated
to say something like this: "The Romans had difficulty
in meeting the Hunnic cavalry challenge, because they
used horse races that were dependent upon regular supplies
of oats, whereas the Hunnic horses were self-supplied."

I just read about Attila's campaign, that scholars
have been debating whether 75 days was enough to move 
from Metz to Orleans and back again to Mets.
Obviously the scholars think in terms of 10 kilometers a
day, or something  of that order of magnitude.
They also robbed every farmer and every village that was
along their route. How they arranged their logistics is
of course difficult to know exactly. A horse on the move 
will certainly burn a thousand kilocalories an hour
while on the road. For an army of 100 000 horses, that
gives a billion kilocalories a day. Now find somebody
who knows how many hectare of green grass that corresponds
to. 

>Relating to the earlier discussion on Gothic horses
>and the importance of cavalry I wanted to bring to
>the lists attention a quote from Paul Johnson's
>_Enemies of Society_ (Swedish edition Stockholm:
>Ratio, 1980).
>

>This quote concentrates on the agricultural importance
>of the Gothic horse
        ^^^^^^
It is here that I am uncertain how you define a "Gothic horse".
I think in the quote below, Lynn White is not referring to
the kind of horse that might be called "Gothic" for the
purpose of our discussion.

>
>"En haest producerar 50 procent mer skaalpundfot energi per
>sekund aen en oxe och roer sig mycket fortare, den har stoerre
>uthaallighet och kan arbeta omkring tvaa timmar laengre varje
>dag...Det var utbredningen av havreodling som gjorde det
>moejligt att foeda stora maengder haestar....Lynn White: 'Oxen
>aer en graesdriven motor, haesten aer en mycket effektivare
>havredriven motor.' Naer det gaellde havre producerade de 
>nordliga boenderna oeverskott och de kunde daerfoer haalla
>mer haestar."

Here you are of course quoting outdated units.
The "skålpund" was however approx. 498 grammes, as far as
I am able to determine. Hence a "skålpundfot per second" equals
approximately 0.5 kg * 0.3 m/s = 0.15 kgm/s = ca. 1.5 Nm/s =
= 1.5 Watt. But you still did not give us the number of
"horsepowers" that a horse can produce of mechanical work.
If we however put it at 1 hp, then that equals 75 kgm/s.
If we can find the calorie content of fresh grass, we should
then be able to calculate how wide a strip of grass
Attila's horses ate each day during the campaign.

>Source: Lynn White Jr-, _Medieval Technology and Social Change,
>Oxford 1966.
>
>Gothically
>
>Bertil

Calorically,

Keth

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