heavy cavalry engaging heavy cavalry

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus, for some reason with these multi page threads, we can't see the last post and I can't read yours. Don't know if there is a problem with scripting but I only wrote this as it sometimes brings up the previous post. Getting back to the subject, while unclear about the term heavy cavalry ( is it heavily armed or heavily protected by armour & does the armour include the horse as well as rider) but never sure whether offensive/shock cavalry was developed to combat mounted archers or chariots, any thoughts? For example was the natural progression in ancient cavalry warfare that chariots first dominated the battlefield, then horse archer units developed to run rings around & pick off chariot crews and then slightly heavier armed horsemen to combat horse archers who before the introduction of stirrups and being somewhat restricted seated in their saddles had less agility to turn all the way around on their right assuming most held their bow with the left arm & thus would be exposed to attack from behind their right flank by mounted lancers and vice versa if you held the bow with the other arm. It seems that ancient cavalry especially mounted archers were always vulnerable on the right flank according to A.D.H. Bivar in his paper "Cavalry Equipment and Tactics on the Euphrates Frontier". (Maybe the horse archers who used the Parthian shot in battle will disagree) but there has to be some restriction in turning all the way on the side of the arm pulling the bowstring back to his ear & it seems to me that it restricts him if attacked from that side (I am getting bogged down with technicalities now). I notice that a few members have had a go at mounted archery and would be keen to know their thoughts on this as I can only theorise. But John W. Eadie writes that it was probably Massagetae &/or Chorasmians who first developed heavier cavalry but he does credit the Assyrians with some role in the development.
John W. Eadie wrote in his paper "The Development of Roman Mailed Cavalry".

Cavalry equipment brought to light by excavations around the Aral Sea, begun in the 1930's, indicates that similar experimentation with cavalry tactics and armour was under-taken simultaneously by the Massageto-Chorasmian peoples of central Asia. Unfortunately, neither the precise nature of each phase in the development nor the exact relationship of this experimentation to contemporary developments elsewhere can be discerned in the archaeological record, but it is clear that a distinctive Chorasmian cavalryman evolved by the sixth century B.C. According to S. P. Tolstov and B. Rubin, this cavalryman was the prototype cataphract i.e. a partially armoured rider, wearing a coat of mail and perhaps a metal helmet, on a horse whose head and flanks were partially protected by metal plates. The offensive weapons of the Chorasmian cataphracts and the Assyrian' hybrid' horseman were identical (bow and pike): both could fire arrows from a distance and then charge with their pikes to engage infantry or cavalry at close quarters. They differed, however, in one major respect: the Assyrians, as far as we know, did not attempt to protect the horse as well as the rider.

Regards
Michael Kerr