Abstract
Horse is one of the most important livestock. Since wild horses mostly spread over flat and broad plains, the ethnic groups living here domesticate horses at the earliest time. In the Potai ruins with about 5,500 years located in the North of Kazakhstan, the pottery that had been filled with horse milk and the changes in the bones caused by the domestication of horses were discovered, which has so far become the earliest known relic of horse domestication. Up to now, when people refer to the nomadic tribes, the image of the nomads galloping on the horseback immediately springs to their mind. Farming peoples start to feed and use horses in the later period, but a series of improvements and new advancements of carriage hitching techniques have greatly promoted the expansion of the use of horses among the settled farming peoples. Among them, the improvement of carriage hitching techniques and the invention of stirrups are the two major technologies that exert important influences on social development, and they are closely related to China.
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References
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The viewpoint was proposed by a French military officer called R. L. des Noёttes at the beginning of the 20th Century that such neckband driving method is easy to hold horse’s trachea and causes horse to suffocate when moving forward and reduces efficiency and the load capacity of animal force. Such view once was broadly cited. Joseph Needham also mainly cited the view in his book called The History of Science and Technology in China in volume 4, part 2, and made Chinese academic community convince that the yoke method is better than the neckband method. However, such view was already outdated. After studying the horse breed, roads, images and literatures, the Western scholars believed that Noёttes’ mistake was to place the driving point on the horse’s back on the shoulder joint which made horse the most painful. Nevertheless, in fact, the popular driving point was below the shoulder in Roman age (distributed along the Mediterranean coastal areas). This kind of driving method is called the dorsal yoke. From the Seine to the north of the Rhine, the driving point was above shoulder. It was called neck yoke. The two methods would not affect horse’s breathing. Whether it prevented breathing more than the earlier driving method in Greek-Rome age, it needed further studying. It could refer to Judith A. Weller. Roman Traction Systems. http://www.Humanist.De/rome/rts/index.html. Considering comprehensive summary about the driving method in classic age, it could refer to G. Raepsaet. Riding, Harness, and Vehicles. Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008: 580–605.
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Chen, W. (2020). Carriage Hitching Technique and Stirrup. In: Hua, J., Feng, L. (eds) Thirty Great Inventions of China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6525-0_18
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