[gothic-l] Gothic horses

Sat Apr 6 04:55:41 UTC 2002

Keth,

Could not tell you if it was the same White
but it seems to have gone unnoticed that
we are this time debating the general
advantage north of the Alps in using
horses instead of oxen. Also about the 
superiority of agricultural technique.

Jag citerar igen Paul Johnson:

"Naer greker och romare plöjde hade de
använt den laetta traeplogen som koerdes
tvaa gaanger oever fyrkantiga faelt med
tunn jord. "(Resultatet av användningen av den
tunga järnplogen blev dramatisk, den kunde...) 
bearbeta aeven den tyngsta jord, foeraendrade
bokstavligen jordbrukslandskapet. De fyrkantiga
faelten foervandlades till laanga remsor som
gick upp och ner over landskapets konturer och
gav alltid någon skoerd, till och med under mycket
torra eller vaata aar." (p. 35)

So it was the iron plough and the horses that
were superior to Roman technique. And then
there was slavery in the empire.

When the so called 'barbarians' moved inside
the empire, it had by then declined so that the
Goths and others regarded the Roman society
as inferior, even if there was some material
wellbeing. The society was unfree. Tacitus skrev
en del om slavar i _Germania_. 

"I de gotiska samhällena var husslavar en okaend
foereteelse. Naer slavar anvaendes inom jordbruket,
bodde de i egna bostaeder (de kunde faktiskt ocksaa
aega egendom9 och var i viss maan sina egna herrar. 
I varje fall var antalet slavar litet, de som fanns var fraemst
icke-germaner och aegdes enbart av de hoegre
klasserna. Kort sagt, slaveriet var en marginell foere-
teelse i det germanska samhället.". (p. 30)

Besides it was something imported from Roman society.
The sickness of slavery had poisoned society in the
Roman empire, there was a development in the other
direction in Gothic and other societies :the dynamic idea 
of freedom in the end came to influence the whole of Europe
in the Middle Ages.

In my opinion the example of the small Icelandic
horses is not relevant in relation to the large working
horses or the big war horses. I must admit I am not
very well versed when it comes to the Icelandic horses
but it has been my impression that it was not used
for plowing, but I may be insufficiently informed.
It is also a little complicated to explain cavalry
campaigning tactics then and up to the 19th century
or the beginning of the 20th. Grazing horses during 
campaigning would not have been a very good idea.

A bit further down you are switching from discussing
Gothic and Roman cavalry campaigning to that
of the nomads of the steppe. Horse keeping of
the nomads? I am sure there are lists for Mongol
and Hinnic horsemanship and history.

The White quote serves to illustrate the superiority of
the techniques for farming used north of the Alps.
There slaver and wooden tools plus oxen, here horses
and iron. What a difference !

Gothically

Bertil

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. Letting horse graze would have been
a dangerous.

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
        ^^^^^^

>"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."

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