Beasts without their part in the covenant could survive, too - take the zebras, tribeless until Joraz Kyreem, as an example. And even horses did fairly well in the 2nd Age, as long as they kept to the Good Place north of Tada's Tumulus, or on the western fringes.
A lot of fringe Prax is fairly lush except in the hottest fire season. So would Prax but for the scathing droughts carried in not by Daga but by Storm Bull (which is why Orlanth the Youth - to avoid Warrior/Adventurous discussion - makes a useful weather deity here, with his lariat and sharp stick victory over bullying brother).
Peter Metcalfe:
> Horse and Cattle do not survive on the chapparal. The Pol Joni live
> in the good regions of prex where horses are able to be grazed. Their
> 'cattle' are beasts stolen from the other tribes.
The Pol Joni have fairly ordinary bovine cattle for their herds, and use the beasts stolen from other tribes for meat, just liek other tribes. Neither do the Praxians mind bovine cattle - they like to raid eastern Sartar for it. If Derik had taught his tribe to ride cattle, it might even have become as ordinary a tribe of Prax as the zebra people...
>> Just because Europe and the Fertile Crescent were a bit >> slow in developing stirrups doesn't mean that Gloranthans >> have to be - they have a lot more riding people, too.
Steve Lieb:
> Whoa! Who has a lot more riding people? So the Praxians +
> Pentans are more than the Tatars, Bulgars, Mongols, Huns,
> etc, etc, etc? (Depending on how broadly you care ot cast
> the RW net...) - a dubious assertion.
If you had given me pre-imperial Persians, Scythians, and Huns, I might have agreed. Tatars and Mongols aren't pre-stirrup people. I'm not sure about the Huns, they may have developed it.
The discovery of riding in Glorantha is fairly ancient, and quite a few of the peoples didn't develop their own stirrups. I'm not sure about the Malkioni, whose early knights may have been similar to Late Roman Clibanarii or early Frankish knights - heavy cavalry without stirrups. The Galanini seem to have ridden bareback, the earliest Hyalorings as well. The Hirenmador and other horse nomads started out as charioteers, and took to riding only when their horses had grown large enough. See the Londarios Library for info...
Other mounts than horses include the menagerie of Praxian beasts and the various kinds of running birds of Kestinliddi/Rinliddi. While the ratio of horse nomads to settled people may be about the same, these exotic riders come in addition, and this led me to my statement.
It appears that it was General Kastok of Dara Happa who introduced the stirrup - or how else can the sudden cavalry dominance of Dara Happa be explained?
>> As I recently was told by a smith working with >> experimental archaeologists, [snip] ... And then the >> iron is likely to be of a quality >> little better than bad bronze.
> I again am more than a little dubious. This seems to be a
> Eurocentric assumption. The dominance of the Assyrian war
> machine was based significantly on the major advantage of
> its iron vs. its neighbors' bronze.
The Hittites were the first to assume dominance because they had access to both iron and bronze compared to their less advanced neighbours with only bronze (and stone, as the Bible reminds us). This meant more heavy troops able to take some more damage, and this tipped the balance for a while. I don't know when and how the Assyrians inherited this advantage.
> To say that the
> quality of the iron ore produced was even COMPARABLE to
> bronze is stretching it. Yes, bronze is easier to handle,
> but the significant characteristics of iron improved by
> even the marginal addition of carbon (almost inevitable in
> primitive smelting)
The problem is too much carbon, too much phosphorous. What you get from primitive smelting is a lot worse than cast-iron, and unless master smiths used oxydizers (like chicken dung, as in the Wayland Saga), impossible to get rid of.
Iron makes great axes, but sophisticated blades took some time to become widespread. The Trojan siege saw a couple of iron blades, likely of meteorite iron in the hands of the greatest heroes of the age. These probably were tempered, and in addition made from superior "ore".
> and the high effectiveness of tempering
> on even poor steel (vs bronze, on which tempering's effects
> are much less) makes iron and its products an order of
> magnitude better in all respects.
Only after you get experience with the material.
> And I don't mean just
> weapons in this discussion - weapons are just the most
> obvious. But wheel hubs, axles, woodworking tools, etc
> etc. The whole society becomes more productive.
The effect of iron was to make metal available for these jobs, but that took some time - for quite a while, even stone implements persisted.
> Now, how do I wander back on-topic?
If you tell us how Gloranthan bronze-smiths work their material.
Peter Metcalfe re: difficulty of working bronze:
> To get hold of is what I meant. One required tin which could only
> be found in two places in europe (Bohemia and Cornwall). This
> restricted the available metal to such an extent that bronze age
> armies had very little metal artefacts compared to the armies of
> the iron age.
My point above, yes.
>>As I recently was told by a smith working with experimental >>archaeologists, in that case your average stead would have one or >>two knives and one axe.
> But prior to this, your average hedebysque stead would have been lucky
> if it had something like a bronze knife. Thus they wouldn't have been
> able to cut down trees at any significant rate.
Stone blades are vastly underrated, according to other experimental archaeologists from around here. One has to know how to use them properly, but then a well made razor blade from flintstone is well up to comparison with a modern steel razorblade, both in durability and sharpness.
Jose Ramos:
Nice stuff on Safelstran smithwork.
Jane Williams [emphasis mine]
>>I've never believed that story about Yelmalio ACCIDENTLY wiping out >>his own temple doing a DI, myself, unless he holds the record for Most >>Incompetent God.
Peter:
> There are ample mythological precedents. <snipped>
All of these precendents were deliberate actions to destroy the temple to show displeasure, and not magical side-effects.
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