Origin of the Alans

[Michael Kerr]

Can't see the attachment Alanus.
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus, is this the image of the Qin cavalry horse and groom that you tried to upload? Maybe image was corrupt so I downloaded from Facebook, opened in Photoshop and resaved as a jpg which usually works for me if image sometimes has corruption problems loading. So if it works it was more than likely the image was the problem not your profile, these things get tricky and frustrating sometimes. Back to the cavalry horse I see your point, there seems to definitely be some Pazyryk influence. The Qin defeated and drove out the Xiongnu from the Ordos in about 215 BC and it wouldn't surprise me if they had Yuezhi help so a Pazyryk influence on the Qin horses and gear does not surprise me considering the Xiongnu and Yuezhi were enemies. I would love to know the significance of the single crenallation though, I read in Miklos Jankovich's book They Rode into Europe which admittedly was aimed at horse lovers and not historians and was originally in Hungarian then translated to German and then into English from the German translation, that he thought that the crenallated mane was for riders to mount their horses easily but no source material unfortunately. The horse appears gelded as well which indicates a steppe influence I think Carolyn Willekes in her book on ancient horses alluded to that fact. If a Yuezhi horse then maybe that is what one of the two classes of the Pazyryk horses looked like with thicker legs than the long legged Southern Steppe horses like the extinct Turkomans.
Regards
Michael Kerr

   

[Alanus]

Michael,

Yes, that's the exact image. I went back to my last post, and the image is showing. I think Jasper (hopefully) fixed the problem. As you can see, the Qin cavalry horse has 4 characteristic style elements found on Pazyryk Culture mounts, not found in other cultures at this time. (Later, the Alans used braided/twisted tails and crenellated their horses' manes... so the connection starts here in Warring States to Qin periods.) I was hoping for some feedback by other RAT members.

[Robert Vermaat]

Yes, that's the exact image. I went back to my last post, and the image is showing. I think Jasper (hopefully) fixed the problem. 

No, this is a mod (me) clearing the image from the mod queue as if you are a new member.

[Alanus]

Thanks, Robert
I appreciate it.

[Michael Kerr]

Alanus wrote:

Overall, we are looking at horses smaller than the impression given by Sergei Rudenko in 1953. When he discovered the Pazyryk horses, Rudenko was impressed by their "modern" appearance, likening them to the Akhal teke. He envisioned a long-legged breed, refined, originating in Persia, and imported by the Altai chieftains. I have no idea why Rudenko chose the Akhal teke, other than the fact it was an ancient breed. However, he was looking at dehydrated remains which gave the illusion of "race-horse" refinement. In actuality, the Pazyryk horses were not tall or leggy... even though countless contemporaneous illustrations depict them as near Thoroughbreds

 

 Sorry for going back a bit on this thread but I am not really sure if it was Rudenko who was the culprit in this. The 27 year old Mikael Gryaznov opened Kurgan 1 in 1929 even though Rudenko was in charge of the expedition he seemed to be absent from the opening of the first kurgan. It was Gryaznov’s description of the find and an examination of the bodies of the 10 horses from Kurgan 1 by V.O. Vitt who was chair of Hippology at Moscow University and who later wrote two reports about the bodies, the first in 1937 after examining the bodies in Kurgan 1 and the second in 1952 after examining a larger sample of horses. He noted that there was variation in both the size (calculated withers heights). He classified from the bodies 4 different groupings of Pazyryk horses due to these variations. This original report created a great deal of discussion about the possibility of these horse variations being the result of either trading or raiding, through which the seemingly larger and finer horses could have been obtained. Indeed, this prompted Gryaznov to suggest that the best of the horses belonged to the famous ancient Central Asiatic breed, which were the progenitors of the famous Akhal-Teké breed. It was assumed that the rest of the horses, being smaller and of less striking confirmation, may have been the result of the crossbreeding of the Central Asian type with the small but strong and hardy local horse stock.

 After WW2 between the years 1947 to 1949 Rudenko then opened the kurgans 2 to 8. Another 47 horse bodies were found but only the ones from kurgans 1, 2 and 5 were fully preserved  and partly preserved bodies from kurgan 3. Vitt was again called in to examine this wider selection of horses and retracted his earlier suggestions after examining the larger sample and admitted that the larger horses were not that much bigger than the smaller horses and thought that the larger horses were a result of being castrated at an earlier age (18 months to 2 years), it seems all the horses buried were castrated. He suggested that earlier castration increases the period of cannon-bone growth and helps towards the development of finer bones in the legs.

 Just another point which to my mind is not researched enough with eastern type horses in general is what happened to all the horses that once pulled the war chariots that invaded northern China, the Middle East and Northern India. It is commonly mentioned in Chinese sources according to Naiko Egami who wrote that the Yuezhi bred a carriage horse, the k'uai-t'i which was much appreciated for its manner of running which had a gait similar to a flying amble which was represented in the famous Chinese 2nd century AD bronze statue of the flying horse see below. Even if the horses from Pazyryk were bigger than their chariot horse ancestors they would have remained amblers from birth after centuries of selective breeding for chariotry but the amblers were also good riding horses with a comfortable stride and even Vegetius when he talks about the various breeds of horses makes special mention of the Persian horses which seemed to be his favourite riding horse ( I don't know what happened to the Nissean breed which had been the famed Persian war horse from Achaemenid times described so often by western sources.) He mentions their gait and describes them as ‘ambulatores’ or pacers. It makes me wonder about the horses buried with the carriage in Kurgan 5 of which there were 9 well preserved specimens.

   

Regards

Michael Kerr

[Robert Vermaat]

I wish we could do something permamnent with this thread. Now that Alanus is gone to the eternel steppes it would be a real shame to let this discussion fade away?

[Renatus]

It has always surprised me that this thread is not listed amongst the 'Important Threads' in this forum.

[Michael Kerr]

Yes Alanus was very passionate and proud of this thread and the members responses as he told me many times. Just didn't seem to be enough studies (at least in English ) on a link between between the western migration of the Alans and the Pazyryks and Yuezhi and other Eastern groups and he spent a lot of time trying to piece the jigsaw. He was a great storyteller and I loved his sense of humour and which I don't think any of us escaped. Apologies to Evan but I still remember the Helmet straightened thread, I had quite a chuckle over that one but there were many others.        https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/thread...raightened
Regards
Michael Kerr

[Sean Manning]

I agree that it would be good to do something with this thread! It would take an editor who knows the right archaeology and was willing to invest several days turning a thread into a website or book draft.

This forum has lost things in the past to software upgrades or spam attacks and it would be good to put Alan's work somewhere more stable.