>Oh good - if you can't argue with facts, try bloody mindedness...
Well you were the first to start being bloody-minded as can be seen from the following extract:
> >> >Perhaps you ought to look at Praxian Housing on p12 of the Players
> >> >Book: Genertela where it makes the distinction between house tents
> >> >(everything is unpacked for stays of more than a week in one area)
> >> >and travel tents (smaller, less comfortable, defensible etc).
> >>So what?
> >Try reading the next few sentences and find out.
>The point is that how the praxians live has little to do with how the
>pentans live.
Well you could have said _this_ instead of just interjecting "so what?" and made _clear_ just what you were precisely objecting to. I did address this very point in the next few sentences, namely that as mounted nomads living in similar conditions (do you still deny that the conditions are similar?), they would have a similar method of housing.
> >Then perhaps you better give us the benefit of your pedantry for
> >in this thread, we have already been given two radically different
> >meanings of a Yurt.
>Yurts were tents used by a variety of nomadic steppe dwellers.
To wit, a Yurt in english is a large domed tent much like with a framework much like Buserian's Frame in the GRoY. On the mongolian steppes, such tents were called "Gers" and Yurt was used to refer to a collection of tents.
>They were
>designed to be moved rapidly, either through folding or by placing on the
>back of a cart, as a defense against attack by mounted raiders.
And whence comes this "designed to be moved rapidly" definition? Is there some Mongolian Yurt-makers Association that sues people who sell Yurts that can't be quickly folded away?
Mine own sources merely point out its portability, which does not require that it be able to be tossed onto a back of a horse or even folded up and packed away within the hour. Hence your hairsplitting pedantry that I am using the word wrong looks like substanceless tendentiousness.
>I'm
>quite happy for your Char Un not to live in such tents, but more permenant
>structures, owning more wealth, etc.
Well that was not apparent in the original post, was it?
> >Are you speaking of English Yurts or Mongolian Yurts?
>I've never heard the word used in English except to describe the tents
>used by various steppe tribes, including (but not limited to) the mongols.
Not not all nomadic tents are capable of being tossed on a horse or rolled up or packed away within the hour. Yet the average person still describes them as a Yurt.
> >But those steppe nomads herded cattle, wheres the CharUn do
> >_not_. Therefore the CharUn are obliged to specialize their
> >horses, which contrary to your statement is not a modern
> >concept.
>Why does the CharUn lack of cattle mean they have to specialise
>their horses?
Because they need all sorts of stuff that were provided by cattle, sheep or goats, which they cannot have.
>In the real world, the typical pattern was :
>riding horse : whichever one is currently fittest.
>blood horse : One I'm not going to ride for a bit.
>Meat horse : One which is too old/injured to keep.
Yes, and in the RW there was no tribe which herded only horses and refuse to accept any other sort of beast. Thus this pattern is inadequate for the CharUn etc.
>Why would the CharUn be different? We have reasonable evidence that the
>Praxians aren't...
But the Praxians don't have taboos about herding or eating from another animal (with the singular exception of a horse). Hence deficiencies in their own livestock are made up from beasts of other herds.
>Even today where a vast amount of specialisation
>occurs, mixed herds are rare - most farmers maintain one breed of cattle
>at a time.
Primarily a product of our developed economic system in which a farmer doesn't have to grow sheep if he wants a woollen jersey for the winter. Whereas the CharUn and many other tribes have to be self-sufficient to some extent or another and meet whatever needs they have from their own resources. Since the CharUn have _only_ horses, they have a problem not shared by most other nomadic tribes.
> >And where did the nomads store these meat horses when
> >they weren't hungry if they didn't keep them with a
> >herd?
>They ate them, or dried the meat over fires. If attacked during the
>butchering process they would abandon them. The one thing they would NOT
>do is keep them with the herd.
And where were these horses kept before the butchering process if they weren't in the herd? They are not suitable for riding, yet the nomads can't eat them all at once.
>However, I'm going to stick with my image of the CharUn as
>warriors mounted on ponies breed for speed and stamina, armed with
>stirrups and bows, understanding the power of terror against the soft
>settled people, and avoiding raids on their women and children by picking
>up everything they own and getting out of the way.
And what on earth makes you think that I don't believe this?
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #545
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