Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Alanus]

Alanus/..How are you cutting pasting the quotes of others into your replies?

leave the opening brackets with the poster's name, remove chaff with backspacing, then type-in end-quote brackets. Answer that section. Move on to add new poster's quote brackets, etc. Always start and end in the same formula the quote came to you with.

Sulimirksi has it that Arimaspi were proto Sarmatians but I am not convinced. Tried for years to prove that Sarmaty had portable forges maybe,.

Don't know about all Sarmats, but the Alans were forging Chalybean-type damascus steel swords prior to AD. Some studies through micro-spectography have been done on five different kurgan-found swords; they have random particles of steel ("cut steel," as the Lady of the Lake claimed). So it appears the Alans had highly efficient portable forges. Indeed, the swords became quite popular, finally known as the Black Sea Style. Fancy buggers. I suppose we ought to toss Britain into the ring, maybe ad the word cavalry, but swordmaking was not too popular on the Isle, not mentioned in history, not even in the Welsh tradition. Aventicum, east of the Jura, was a Celtic swordmaking oppidum.

But..it seems the steppe was once a giant smelting area in the copper age and reduced from deciduous forest to steppe because of that. Some carbon footprint that!

Evidently the iron age began earlier than once thought. King Tutankamen had an iron Hittite dagger in his tomb, now in the Cairo Mus. The Hittites worked in exactly the same mountains that the later Chalybes dug their ore. (The Chalybes still, exist. My eldest son went to school with Nate Chalybe, son of an Iranian refugee.) In China, the iron age came late, but it came from the steppes-- as did the spoked wheel and Chinese chariot.