Medieval Horses Were Tiny Puny Mini Ponies! How Silly!
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- Hello noble ones! This is a video response to the following articles:
www.popsci.com...
www.iflscience...
Link to Viking Merchant to order your own custom made mail shirt!
/ vikingmerchants
Here is the list of the full bibliography used to base my video
onlinelibrary....
renaissancehor...
www.researchga...
www.researchga...
virtuabis.free....
Plus the texts mentioned on the video itself which I'll add later on today :D
I'm pretty sure that most knights didn't have horses, and they just made their squires bang coconut half-shells together to sound like horses. Where they got the coconut shells from however is still a bit of a mystery.
Well that's obvious. It was carried by a swallow. Whether it was a European or African swallow however, is still a hot debate.
Well done
@@bezoticallyyours83 but then of course African swallows are non-migratory.
@@purabranjan4494 Sure, but a five ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut
@@saintnick6598 actually it can if it beats its wings 43 times a second.
Historians have measured 2000 cutting and piercing instruments used in the middle ages. Most of them were knives, so it's safe to say knights didn't actually use swords.
"Medieval swords were much smaller than you believe"
@@gustavoboscardin9351
It's not the size of the sword that matters! It's how you use it!
... so I'm told.
@@eldorados_lost_searcher I would rather tell that's how and where you use it, because the smaller the room the shorter the sword would suit better.
Shad will be heartbroken!
As Crocodile Dundee (AKA Paul Hogan) would say, “You call that a knife?”
Great subject. I'm planning a detailed look at this exact topic soon and showing what a 'pony' can do!
I wonder if ur comment will get a like ?
I’m very excited to see your expert take on this! Looking forward to it and as soon as I see your video, I’ll add it to the description box of this one and share it on the community tab. Who better than you to tell us about horses, sir knight
When Metatron gets the rest of his armour finished, you guys should joust
@@ErickeTR I doubt I’d stand a chance against him. I’d rather he trained me to be honest.
@@ErickeTR I dont think Metatron has any experience in such. and whilst having the advantage of youthful vigour this compares not to true experience.
That little animation between the knight and the pony was incredible and very emotional.
Can't wait for its sequel.
You know, without even going through the articles or anything, it's pretty easy to know how big these horses were, because we have medieval horse armor. It's easy to gauge that when many horses ridden into battle were coated with metal and other things that was designed to fit snugly on the animal in question. You can tell how long and broad the horse was and scale the horse appropriately. Does ANYONE look at the armor that is publicly on display in museums in Europe or in that old American Higgins Armory and somehow think that THAT was supposed to fit on a tiny little pony? It's like these morons think we don't have surviving, period made examples of horse gear from that period to check with.
👏
Even if, horses were shorter, people were also shorter, so what's the big deal ?
@@Yautah Except...they weren't? It's a myth perpetuated by dumb people trying to get click bait going. Again, we also have full suits of plate metal armor that shows people weren't short either. They were somewhat smaller but still generally average. Horses in those days were not small little ponies and they weren't normal length but had short legs either. They weren't Corgi horses, lol. The big deal is that you have articles spreading a bunch of dumb BS and when you're into history and can smell that BS, you call it out. People that make these articles always seem to want to rewrite history to whatever reason. It's trash and it should be called out wherever it's found.
@@straker454 "if".
@@Yautah ...okay yeah, good point, lol.
These articles are the equivalent of future archaeologists finding a load of Nissan Micras and then stating that clearly the up armoured Humvees used in the Iraq war were actually just tiny cars. Horses were the cars for most of history, yeah the vast majority of horses ain't gonna be giant beasts bred for war. But the stallions used by heavy cavalry were the up armoured Humvees of their time.
Good comparison actually!
Yes, exactly, thank you!
Or the garbage constantly being spewed on ‘science’ news sites. No, finding antimutagenic properties in an pnion, does not make it a cure to cancer. Dios mio, journalist’s integrity when it comes to science is at a low when it comes to science, especially non scientific publication sources
While medieval warhorses were not small ponies, they were not large animals either because they have horse armor in British museums that only fit horses of 15-16 hands high. Which is 5-5.3 feet tall to highest point on its back. There are also medieval and ancient paintings and carvings showing warhorses as moderately sized where the rider's legs dangle over the sides. The biggest horses are draft horses used for manual labour of pulling carts, wagons, and plows.
@@Intranetusa Yes. Thats true.
The Idea of the shirehorsey destriers is as faulty as shettyponies as them.
Its more about how the articles screwed with the paper then the paper itself.
Even If the papers scope is weird somehow.
I showed raf the whole thing and we both did the research on the topic since we felt a video was in order ^^
A good read on the subject is "The Medieval warhorse" by RHC Davis. Where the horsetransportship picture is taken from for example.
I can link the actual paper too If raf didnt under the vid. Cant see that right now.
Imagine a study that finds that most vehicles used in World War II were not tanks. Then concluding that tanks are a myth and were actually jeeps.
This isn't a problem of the study, they reported correctly that what they found was X in this place and time period, while also telling they can't say what those horses were used for.
This is news media taking a story and fluffing it up for clickbait
All tanks fielded by armies in ww2 were 3 man affairs armed only with machineguns and 20mm cannons!
@@rileyernst9086 and all armored units were 100% electric! Hence the units referred to as "batteries"!
They would never say tanks are a myth because as long as Germans are around, they just summon tanks.
@@lebawsski actually slightly relevant, almost all German tanks were tigers...according to soldiers fears of enemy armor.
Study: "We studied 2000 bones of medieval horses and found that they were 13 hands-high on average, which means today they'd be classified as ponies."
Journalists: "Medieval knights charged to battle on 10 hands-high Shetland ponies!"
also Journalists: horse height is measured between the head and the ground
And this is why people consider journalists worse than con artists.
Maybe we should stop calling people who are not trained or act as journalist journalist. I really dislike how it seems like anyone can be call that nowadays. Just because someone published your work... in the era of self-publishing no less... There are a lot of journalists that do a lot of hard work. But they get easily crowed out by these hacks writing sensational posts just to get clicks. Back to the days of yellow journalism.
the viking horse (icelandic horse) isnt much bigger and relatated to the shetland ponie
bahahaha I have an 11 hand welsh pony. he is a demon. I could see him charging into battle on his own
People have a thirst for knowledge, but are usually not willing to actually dig into a subject that they claim to know magnitudes about.
Well crafted and informed video as always man.
Who'd think that horses would be bred to different sizes based on their roles. Smaller and lighter horses for units that require speed, impossible. Excellent video as always with a wonderful touch of humor.
"The heavier the Cavalryman, the bigger the horse"
Henry VIII of England: *rides in on a monstrosity 21 hands tall.*
this was actually very funny XD
OverSimplified made an A+ joke about how King Henry VIII got to be so heavy that they had to use a crane to lift him onto a horse in their video "Henry VIII".
Ive never ridden a horse bigger than 18 hands. Thats 6 feet or 1.83 metres. That was huge. I doubt if there are any 21 hand horses about.
A 16 hand cob would be a better warhorse.
@@grahamthomson6969 The tallest horse to have ever lived, Sampson, was a Shire breed gelding who stood at about 21.2½ hands tall. He was born and bred in the mid-1800s.
I'm still convinced he rode two horses at the same time.
6:25 I'm so glad you brought this up! We have surviving made-to-fit armour for horses from the period; there shouldn't be any question as to how big they were!
When I read the headlines about the pony war horse articles, I had a feeling that some very critical pieces of information would be omitted. Im glad Metatron read the article multiple times and was able to scholarly dissect it's obvious flaws..
Clearly that "horse" armor was simply part of a massive conspiracy by medieval people to conceal for all time how small their horses really were.
This is more contentious than supposed, much of the surviving armour is comparatively late.
But even then, The armor could be warn by robust, though smaller horses. In fact the armor arguable only improves with a smaller horse. The Destrier, the archetypical, pinnacle knightly horse was as at most 16 hands.
@@tisFrancesfault How tall is a pony: 14.2 hh
That's 4-8 inches shorter than your "at most"
Now go ask any man in the world if he'd notice if 4-8 inches were missing ;)
@@RULERofSTARSPersonally, Id say anything under 16 hands, but im used to larger bastards... i mean horses....
though that said a border definition is anything under 14-15 hands, but at that Hight include Arabians and historic (and smaller contemporary) Thoughbreads.
However, Applying modern concepts to historic animals is silly. Even shire horses are a great deal taller than they were 300 years ago. so it get muddy.
It's quite a leap of logic, from "scientists have found that horses in the past were generally smaller than today", to "Armoured Knights rode funny tiny ponies". Lazy clickbait journalism, misrepresenting the original study. Keep up the good work, Noble Chap :)
You call him a Noble Chap, although statistically speaking he was no Noble or Royal, and none of your ancestors were Knights! Knights were like the F-35s of the past there's not many of them, they were Nobility, most people who fought in Wars were not Knights, and surely didn't have Mail or Plate Mail. You guys are like Delusional
@@randyross5630 It's an affectionate name - he calls his subscribers "Noble Ones", so I'm returning the favour. I know I'm not genuine nobility, and I doubt most of his subscibers are - why has this wound you up so much?
@@randyross5630 haha today almost any idiot can be a knight, peter molyneux the liar for exemple come to mind....
@@randyross5630 wow...
I remember seeing the articles claiming the pony-size thing and thinking: "I am sure one of my favorite youtubers will dismantle this, no need to waste my time"
Thanks for adressing this, I also noticed one of these articles, and had small doubts, knowing that horses vary in size by large amounts.
WAR on misinformation!!
The horses Hernan Cortés brought to America were smaller than Arabian horses, but by no means ponies. I've seen war horse armor from late 14th century and they were meant for full sized horses.
They were smaller in the same way people were also smaller back then, smaller but by no means Hobbits, just smaller
Yup just because they're slightly smaller does not equal ponies.
A horse can be around 5ft tall at the withers at still be classified as a pony. Not all ponies are Shetlands and Welsh minis. The Icelandic horses are ponies and they’re bigger then a Shetland
Yh. The armours of conquistadores are made for 5'4 men. The myth that Spaniards were taller than native Americans has been debunked. Height varied highly between different tribes.
@@giantorres3352 Once you crossed south of the "Mexico" line is when you met all the shorties.
historians: medieval horses were probably smaller
media: god damn they were tiny !!! who knew knights rode on ponies
If these journalists had their way knights would have been riding mini horses, wearing rainbow-colored frilly dresses, and had their lances tipped with feather dusters.
@@adeptronic my friend... yu must watch the ridiculous trauma that is Centaurworld. Then we must return to this comment and laugh about tulip stepping.
The history of human warfare has always been about perfecting and one-upping the tools we fight with.
… except for the medieval era apparently, where everyone just used tiny weak ponies and plate armour that’s worse than going into battle naked.
I suppose next someone will reveal that longbows had no strings and arrows were just chucked at the enemy by hand.
I especially love that we were taught growing up that medieval knights were slow and clunky in their armor when that couldn't be further from the truth
Those English soldiers who learned to throw arrows at amazing speed from the hand were a little known shock unit in the Medieval English army; indeed, they would “rifle” the arrow as it left the hand to make it amazingly accurate. Because of the method of turn involved spinning the arrow a quarter turn as it left the hand, they were known as “quarter back soldiers,” or “quarterbacks.”
There now make me a Gawker journalist
/obviously s
@@wkcia don’t forget they could also twist the arrow so it could fly around corners and that going by the arrow fragments we found they were about the size of tooth picks.
Not to detract from your joke, but I would almost be happy if something like that arose from studies of like javelins and atlatl type weapons. It would draw attention to the study and those types of weapons.They are really cool and do not get enough love imo.
Don't forget they were stupid, filthy and garbed in drab colors...
I couldn't stop chuckling at the title and thumbnail of this video
From personal experience: i was in gratz, austria, in a museum thats a giant armory ranging from the dark ages to the napoleonic era. They had horse armor there. I am almost 2 metres tall (6 foot 4 for the yanks) and that thing was bigger than me.
Leonardo Da Vinci created many brilliant illustrations of horses, including one with dimensions - A horse in left profile, with measurements c. 1490. This is in the Royal Collection. The illustration clearly shows a mighty war horse, not a pony.
The exception to the rule. All the small horses were being used in actual combat. So they gave him the big horse nobody wanted for combat to make drawings of. 🐴🐴🐴🐴🐴🐴
I think the general population needed the smallest most powerful horses they could find for economy. People were smaller then so war horses could have been smaller than we would think. Any horse armour of the time would help to clarify the discussion.
@@oldplucker1 if you watched there is exactly that
Yes, and for most intents and purpouses 1490 is post medieval, certainly in Italy.
@@oldplucker1 The first I am going to do as an Iron Age feudal lord is preserve horse custom to made to fit a particular horse instead of smelting it to make new horse and human armor. 😃😃😃😃😃
It sounds like fairly typical science journalism to me.
Scientists: We've looked at the bones of a lot of medieval horses and most of them are small.
Journalists: Medieval warhorses were tiny ponies!
Scientists: Uh, we didn't say that they were all warhorses...
Trust the Science.
@@europeansovietunion7372 Trust the science, don't trust the media
all journalism is like that, not just science journalism
@@marcogenovesi8570 Having faith in science isn't scientific though, that's scientism.
Science, AKA the scientific method is "only" (and it's quite amazing as it is) a protocol that increases the probability to find the truth close to 1, when applied for an infinite amount of time.
@@europeansovietunion7372 Trusting the science is trusting the scientific method.
Pop Sci.
Gawker.
That's pretty much all you needed to say.
It would be like a future archeologists going to a car junk yard and assuming tanks were made of sheet metal and plastic.
The animation at the beginning made me happier than I expected possible. :)
The famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna uses Lipizzaner horses, a breed who was used be Knights. Today they are actively are breed to be smaller, so they used to be bigger.
These studies are akin to future archeologists digging up a scrapyard and claiming: "The ancient belief that Formula 1 cars could generate 1,000hp is a myth, because all we found were engines that only produced 200hp."
The study is fine, they did put all limits to what they found. It's the news media journalists that decided to twist it
Here's my question: How did the Archeologists know the horse skeletons were Warhorses and not work-horses?
The short answer, they didn't. A large part of the discussion is devoted to exactly this and in the conclusion they suggest potential solutions to analyse horse bones and draw conclusion from them. Something the journalists seem to have clanced over.
"Although it is realistic to assume that the majority of horse bones recovered from archaeological excavations are not from warhorses, there remains a lack of evidence for what types of morphology and conformation to expectfrom a warhorse, meaning that the positive identification of warhorseshas remained elusive from a zooarchaeological perspective." (Armeen et al 2021, 1248). Ameen, C., Benkert, H., Fraser, T., Gordon, R., Holmes, M., Johnson, W., Lauritsen, M., Maltby, M., Rapp, K., Townend, T. and Baker, G.P., 2021. In search of the ‘great horse’: A zooarchaeological assessment of horses from England (AD 300-1650). , (6), pp.1247-1257.
@@andrewbarnett4518 Perhaps they should have gone and asked at one of the Vet colleges or somewhere like Hartpury just what happens to ex-horses nowadays and then extrapolated backwards to a world where animal products were much more valuable.
Alternatively they could go somewhere like Waterloo where we know thousands of large horses were killed and see what trace can be found of them.
@@stamfordly6463 Because i'm sure you know better than real Archaeologists how to conduct an Archaeological study.
@@fancyskull1667 I'm not faulting their actual archaeology but the conclusions drawn from it.
If one is going to claim to look for evidence of warhorses then one should probably start by thinking about how likely it is for their remains to have survived and I'd have thought the best place to start would be by finding out what happens to the remains of modern horses. You can then write in your discussion that whilst you've only found evidence for small equines disposal practices could very easily account for the lack of larger remains.
@@stamfordly6463 You should read the conclusion section of the actual study. They specifically address the points you brought up.
Thank you! I recently had two big disputes due to _survivor bias..._
People stubbornly defend the movie image that medieval castles were all of stone rather than wood and that nothing was ever plastered or painted...
Someone even insulted me for claiming that many battlements were wooden and roofed. Just that we see only stone walls remaining tells us absolutely nothing about what they once looked like...
The same goes for fancy swords over common soldier weapons etc.
Have you been listening to Shadiversity, again?
@@davidweihe6052 I do listen to him, but he's not my only source...
Fun fact Ye is actually pronounced The, it’s not a Y but a letter from old English we lost along the way. It was a Thorn, but once we started printing people we getting confused because it looked so much like a Y then they started using the Y. So it’s actually the “TH” sound
Oh goodness. All of these articles are totally missing the middle ground: medieval knights did not use large draft horses or horses the size of modern German Warmbloods. They rode COMPARATIVELY smaller, more compact horses which had a short back. Which allows any horse to carry heavier weights more easily. And makes them more manouverable. Hence all the stuff which was later cultivated in the "Alta Escuela" and is nowadays considered an art form carried out only by a few people (think Vienna Riding School). Horses comparable nowadays caliber and size-wise may be the Spanish PRE, the Portuguese Lusitano (these two breeds sometimes still produce horses also comparable character-wise to a medival destrier, but is not desired for common equestrian use), also the Lipizzaner, these types of horses. They are all within the range of 1,50 to 1,60 m at the withers, if from traditional blood lines. These are not ponies, they are considered "classical breeds".
Oh interesting, they actually have a similar shape as the ones seen in manuscripts. I often sort of just thought that that way of depicting horses was just a strange cultural phenomena, but it makes much more sense that the horses actually had that shape.
@@Osvath97 Indeed. Also, the high-arched neck, together with the rider placed higher on the saddle than modern saddles, created a very awe-inspring illusion. The horse appeared to be taller than it actually was. Also, the girth of these horses is wider than that of modern Warmbloods. Meaning that you have to stretch your legs further apart (hence that medieval saddle was the way it was). I experienced that myself on my 1,55 m Spanish horse. Despite being myself 1,76 m, I never felt too tall in any way on him. RIding such a horse simply gives you a totally different feeling. And as my legs were further away from his belly (thus also my calves), I had to use corresponding equipment (yes, rather long spurs. He was fully trained in classical dressage, therefore precise communication was a requirement to be able to ride him safely. If he did not understand, he started to interpret your rider aids.).
Another breed that might fit that description is the bardigiano, although that one might border on too small. But holy shit they're muscular.
They forget that horses have been bread throughout Eurasia for thousands upon thousands of years for cavalry use.
Hell, the bloody Indo-European Yamnaya people who lived some 5000 years ago were well known for having a culture strongly centered around equestrianism. Obviously, these people bred horses of a variety of shapes and sizes to fit different types of combat, equipment, environments, etc.
Took the words right out of my mouth, a large draft in full kit would throw a hoof on a muddy battlefield
No wonder people are finding so many bones from small civilian horses: The warhorses were the tanks of their day, and what do we find more remains of, old cars or old tanks? Warhorses are outnumbered more than 100 to 1 so of course it will seem like everyone rode a little pony...
What do you consider such a knightly horse? If you think of say something comparable to a "modern" horse like an Irish black used even now by the British armed forces, then you are thinking of a breeds that had yet to exist till maybe around 16-1700s in the primitive form.
That is if you expect a 1800s large, fast cav horse to exist in the 1300s, the sorry to disappoint but they more or less didn't. Destrier was "only" abut 16 hands tops.
Not to mention knights didn't ride their "tanks" 24/7. Modern History TV/Jason Kingsley shows on his channel that knights swapped their "tanks" for civilian "cars" most of the time.
Even tanks are hauled around in trucks and ships when not in active (ie combat) use.
Daniel Vavra (the chief director of Kingdom come: deliverance) recently disputed this study and summarized it rather simply in a metaphor: "what these researchers did was that they investigated a medieval scrapyard, found only Ford Mondeo and no Ferrari F350, and concluded that medieval millionaires drove Mondeos, and existence of a Ferrari is a myth."
I would add that if you read the study, you will find out that they actually found a "Ferrari", but then they for some reason (probably publicity) decided to average their findings and concluded that an average is closer to "Mondeo", so Mondeo it is...
I'm an equestrian, and I absolutely second what Daniel Vavra said. There were multiple different types of horses that people - knights included - rode during the Middle Ages.
And KCD is a serious refencence to you? I know we had big expectations at the time it was under development. But if you actually know anything of the period in question you should realise it is a nice game, with a horrible interface, and a mix of gear from several centuries. In German we'd call that Gromi or Marktvolpertinger.
@@caranorn I've never played KCD. All I'm saying is that I can back up what Daniel Vavra is saying from an equestrian POV.
@@EyreAffair Well I can assure you this has been refuted from an equestrian POV. I find it quite astonishing that there are still riders about who think weight carrying is an issue of a horse's size.
@@caranorn The thing is, we have horse armor from that period, we have written documents about horses from that period, hell even the study itself found several bones from horses that were really big, but for some reason it concluded a total BS saying "knights used ponny sized horses". And by the way, KCD is not 100% realistic (it lacks crossbows and early firearms), but its as realistic as it could possibly be.
I´ve visited Segovia Castle in Spain once. There, there were three mounted armored knights mannequins on top of three also armored horse mannequins. The horses were normal size horses, and the armor fitted them well. It would not made any sense to manufacture oversize armor for this supposed "pony" size horses.
It was ceremonial.
@@kabardino1337 If it was ceremonial, the horse armor would have been larger yet. Not smaller.
@@leedavis7508 It's a reference to older metatron video.
@@kabardino1337
Stick with current threads.
You're assuming everyone saw the one you're referring to.
@@leedavis7508 😎👌
The comedy skill of this channel has steadily increased over the years and it shows.
I'm an equestrian who rode from age 7 into my 20s, and I linked with Jason Kingsley / Modern History TV on Twitter a while back. (Hi, Jason!) One of the biggest issues with these articles is that the people writing them are often totally unfamiliar with horses. If you ask any modern equestrian, especially one who is familiar with medieval history, they would be immediately able to tell the different between a horse (above 14.2 hands high at the withers, or shoulders) and a pony (14.2 hands high and below).
For those interested, I've also written answers on Reddit and Quora as to common myths and misconceptions about horses in the Middle Ages, leading up to the Tudor and Renaissance eras, into the early pre-modern colonial periods. (i.e. I examined now-extinct horse breeds like the Irish Hobby and Narragansett Pacer, while also talking about the still-around Spanish Andalusian.) I also took a look at the development of horse breeds from horse "types" over the centuries, as many modern breeds bear little to no resemblance to their medieval ancestors, with the exception of the Irish Connemara (i.e. Irish Hobby, with refinement) and the Spanish Andalusian. The latter is called the "Spanish Pure-Breed" for having kept "pure" bloodlines since the Middle Ages.
Lastly, another big misconception about "medieval horses were ponies" - again, stemming from those who have no horse experience completely misunderstanding what actually constitutes a "pony", and ignoring there is a wide range of different breeds of ponies, not just fat and shaggy Shetland ponies - is that height has also fluctuated over the centuries, as well as what kind of horse(s) people liked to ride. The Middle Ages are a large window of time, and depending, heights could range from "nearly as tall as modern men", to "up to 2.5 inches shorter than today".
Horses' heights also fluctuated over time to match the height of your average rider(s); the so-called "Great Horse" would not be bred until the Tudor era. In 1535, King Henry VIII of England instituted a state-enforced English breeding program that sought to increase the size of horses to "Supersize Me" proportions, presumably in his attempt to "have bigger horses" than his French rivals. King Henry VIII was a very tall man himself, being a towering 6'2" for the time period, and needed bigger horses to ride. However, horse breeding takes decades, if not centuries.
There were similar breeding programs in other places in the 16th century. The Fugger had a big one, getting horses from Hungary etc, used a lot for the imperial cuirassiers during the 30y war. When the swedes moved south, they concentrated all their breeding stock in a remote tyrolese valley to keep them safe...
@@positroll7870 Right, but when an article says "in search of the Great Horse", they're specifically referring to the "Great Horse" of King Henry VIII of England.
Judging by the horse armour Ive seen they were quite large and impressive. Given that kind of armour is from the late middle ages, but I reckon horses didnt double in size in just a couple of centuries
While medieval warhorses were not small ponies, they were not large animals either because they have horse armor in British museums that only fit horses of 15-16 hands high. Which is 5-5.3 feet. There are also medieval and ancient paintings and carvings showing warhorses as moderately sized where the rider's legs dangle over the sides. The biggest horses are draft horses used for manual labour of pulling carts, wagons, and plows.
@@Intranetusa What I read was under 15 hands, the armor at the Tower of London. Horse shoes and bits from ~1300 point to horses under 14 hands on average, with none over 15 hands. I'm not sure why Metatron is so worked up over this.
The problem, as always, it is applying modern classification to the medieval period.
A 14 hands horse can be considered a pony by modern classification, but that's not a small horse by any mean, neither weak nor slow like a 10 hands pony
it doesn't help when the article writers don't understand that the 14 hands figure is to the shoulder and not to the head
Not to mention people where shorter on average so the differences would basically offset each other and leave us with the same proportions of man to horse as we would now anyways.
@@St1cKnGoJuGgAlO Not the same proportion at all. Medieval Europeans were only 2-3 inches shorter than modern ones, and the nobility would likely be a bit taller than average. But horses sizes have increased by feet.
One of the best war horse breeds was the Irish Hobby, around 12-13 hands high and typically could travel 70-80 miles per day. A lot of these were used by nobles and knights that didn't wanted to be apart of independent units. They were used to scorched-earth the lands around English armies in the hundred Year war and Scottish Independence Wars and to attack the supply lines. Having very large horses is more of a cultural thing for a few countries, since War is not just about charging from point A to B as the bigger breeds may not have the endurance for hit and run warfare and may have issues being supplied by food since they required more food then the land can support normally.
I work professionally with horses. Horses are amazingly strong, but the concept that what people consider a pony, although strong and sturdy, could carry a grown man in full plate and launch at a gallop is ridiculous. Plus England in the 300 A.D. would have been full of ponies, simply because they pulled war carts. Different horses have different purposes. On top of it all a 14 hands animal is not a "pony" there are many Arabians that size, and they make exceptional war mounts. Fearless, full of stamina, graceful and fast as quicksilver.
The closest thing I can imagine to a medieval war horse is something like a Frisian work horse. Tall, muscular and reliable horses.
Berber cavalry was famous in Roman Times, but I am not sure if they had effective heavy lance cavalry.
Depends on what one considers a pony. Id consider 14 hands a Pony. not to say its not either swift nor powerful, yet a pony.
@@jasperdelange4748 incorrect, think German warmblood breeds. Frisians LOOK like "fantasy horses" but AFAIK not used in that manner.
@@tisFrancesfault the problem I have with the article is the easy connection it tries to make between the general "idea" of a pony in the eyes of the general public, and the terminology used. A 14 hands animal is technically a pony, but a 14 hands Arabian is not a barrel shaped, stubby legged, Shetland. They play on that idea of what a pony is to ridicule the proud and honourable tradition of mounted warfare, and that is not only disingenuous, but disgraceful
Thanks for the digging and sharing of both information and sources. It’s the way to counter all the misinformation spread
I suspect there's a big difference between common domestic cart, plow, generalized work, and commoner riding horse and the WAR-horse. I also suspect there were far fewer WAR-horses than the other types, like, how often do you see an armored military vehicle on the roads right now, today?
Now, it IS known that Monguls rode smaller horses, but, that's not Europe.
> like, how often do you see an armored military vehicle on the roads right now, today?
Mid December, so bad example :-) .
OTOH, I doubt there were many destriers brought to Mexico. I would want faster, lighter breeds, because they were not going to run into many Maximillian Plate armored Aztecs.
@@davidweihe6052 - I guess the question depends on where in the world you are. For most people, and statistically, a large armored military vehicle is in the minority compared to domestic/civilian use vehicles ... as I suspect was similar when it came to horses, and the builds of horses back when animal labor was important. Large armored horses were significantly less common than other builds, but, large armored horses still existed.
@@davidweihe6052 were i live in switzerland rather comon even have warning road signs for the buggers as well. lol
The Mongols also used cataphract like heavy lancers those horses were bigger by necessity but the bulk of Mongol forces were light calvary with horse bows, that indeed used ponies bred for stamina.
Mike Loades said in a documentary about spear/lance that mediaeval horses from the time of the Normans were quite tall and strong. Even as far back as the Parthian Empire, Parthian cataphracts rode on large Nisaean horses.
Yes, and all of this is actually given mention in the study, which I'm not sure Metatron fully read.
Omg ive seen that vid
Gotta love loades
As someone that's been riding horses for a little while now (about 5 years) and it's both interested in riding as well as in history, there's something that many people seem to get wrong, and It's alright if they're not educated in the matter itself or if they've never worked or been around horses, long story short, any horse under ~14.5 hands (148cm) would be nowadays categorized as a pony and anything over that would be an actual horse. Of course, it's a modern way of categorizing them, but let me tell you, a Pony D (140-148cm) or even a Pony C (130-140cm) would look just like a regular horse to anyone that doesn't have the "knowledge".
Just like you've mentioned towards the end of the video (and it makes sense), different horses could've pretty much been used for different tasks, be it charging, skirmishing, delivering messages or teaching a kid how to ride. Personal opinion on this matter? I'm at this day riding a Pony D that's around 145cm tall and he's got a pretty wide stride, meaning he can clear distances very close to what a regular sized horse can in regular exercises. So is he as tall as a horse? No, but he's got a somewhat comparable stride and speed even though it's an actual pony.
100%!!! I really wish the video had pictures of riders on 14.2-15 hh horses I think it would have helped people understand, especially big barreled stallion. I am over 6' and ride a 15.2 hh horse which is not a big horse to modern standards but is line with some extant barding. I am told a lot he is small for me, but I can ride him just fine and he has no problem carrying me.
@@OTTB I do agree that some kind of picture or chart could help some people with the overall comparison, specially since many of us use different measurement units.
When it comes to your personal situation, you're going to get that a lot since you're kind of tall and you ride a horse that's considered a horse by only 6cm or around 2-3 inches. In terms of weight, unless you were extremely heavy, most horses (excluding injured ones, ofc) should carry you with no problem. The "issue" that you might come across when riding horses that are quite smaller in comparison with the rider (specially if you jump with him) it's the weight distribution due to your height, since it'd be easier for someone taller to unbalance his horse if he wasn't aware of distributing his height more precisely, this can also happen for us shorter human beings, but it's usually less of a problem.
@@Darwaell We event, and yes I agree with the balance, I have great coaches to help me with that. At some point if I want to work up the levels I will probably need a bigger horse. But he is fantastic for now.
In my country horses stand at around 130-140 cm and are not classified as ponies
14.5 hh is 15.1hh
Thank you for this. As a horsewomen, breeder, trainer, as well as a student of history, I call falsehood on this media claim as well (though not the actual study). If for no other reason than their ability to carry a fully armoured man along with their own armor.🤦🏽♀️
A palfrey may have been no bigger than 13-14 hands, though not SPECIFICALLY BRED HEAVY HORSES.
Horses were bred for very specific purposes. They were specialized for expected use. Much as we have specific vehicles for specific use. We wouldn't use a Vespa to haul freight, or in battle today. Why would anyone think they did it differently then.
You’re multiple people?
Prior to watching the video I had read that a destrier (knightly-war horse) was about 15 or 16 hh. When I saw the study invoked by the articles about the average size of horses used during the Middle Ages I quickly saw the problem. They were applying the size and build of the medieval everyman's working/transport horse to knights, who had the need and financial means to acquire the biggest and best bred horses on the market, and I am not even a scientist. I find it funny that the same news outlets who shout 'trust the experts' themselves don't understand what the experts are saying.
The ,heavy cavallry' was so called, because they used the tallest horses, the heaviest equipment, and , in later centuries, also the tallest horsemen. Light cavallry used smaller horses, lighter equipment, and in later centuries, average or smaller horsemen. When Dragoner ( dragoons?) had been only mounted infantry, they bot horses of lowest quality, no matter of small or tall.
Yeah. I'd wager that the "warhorses" were relatively small portion of all the horses bread, and so would be rare to see in the archeological record; especially given that it's not very common (at least in my experience) to find horse bones to begin with. I also suspect that they would have higher sentimental value for their owners (or at lest had higher chance of that being the case), so they wouldn't end up in the rubbish pit with other domestic animal bones.
I would also like to add, that even though the horses examined in the study were largely ponies by todays measurements, large portion of them were between ca 135 and 150 cm high - still pretty decent size, if you ask me :D
Great video!
Horses that were meals.
It is not only domesticated horses!
In pre-industrial societies, supplying armies were a particularly difficult task. Not only dead horses would have been consumed, but scavenging the bones for a variety of uses would have been routine. In addition, most of those present in a field army would have been from breed used for different purposes, light cavalry, pack animals, etch. Chargers would have been expensive and a small component of the overall horse number.
I imagine that a bias toward smaller size animal would be found in random sampling due to the difficulties to find fodder for larger specimen in the progressively harsh winters encountered in the Northern European countries from the 15th Century onward.
My first thought when I saw those articles was that it couldn’t be true. How could a tiny pony carry a grown man in a full suit of armor in to battle? Plus iconography doesn’t support that like you said.
I honestly think sometimes that there is a type of person who, in the midst of the marvels of modern technology, software modelling and simulations and that, sort of loses sight of the simple logic of looking at real history. I mean all the graft and what-have-you of doing a study, digging out the bones, measuring them all, feeding in the data, crunching the numbers, creating the clever computer images and so-on, when all they had to do to know just how big medieval war horses were would be to look at pictures showing people and horses to scale, statues too, and at the artifacts made to fit war horses. See this sort of thing all the time with academics who dream up all these fancy theories... completely overlooking or ignoring the fact that it's flat-out contradicted by the existing primary evidence.
Warhorses and cavalry being THE force of late antiquity and medieval times is enough to disprove this, imagine a whole company of fully armoured warriors riding ponies into battle
What is ridiculous though is the image of war horses looking like massive draft horses. From experience I can tell that I would not like a draft horse into battle.
The horses on the pictures shown in the video look more like modern Camargue horses or Spanish horses. These are relatively small, at least compared to modern dressage horses or showjumpers, between 1,35 and 1,60 m.
The Mongols rode ponies and ruled the world.
The point is that whoever wrote the sensationalist article doesn't understand much about horses, doesn't understand much about archeology, doesn't know how to interpret a scientific article and shouldn't even be taken seriously for all the reasons described above...
@@Flugkaninchen war horses were not draft horses lol
Good stuff! In addition, up here in Scotland we have Highland "ponies", which whilst short are extremely muscular, powerful and hardy beasts! We also have the Clydesdale, which is the equine version of "The Hulk"!
I agree, your Italian is amazing. I wish I had learned more from my Neapolitan grandmother.
Thank you for this, I read an article about this study in a reputable newspaper (not the Gawker!) and saw the limitations of the samples studied. I'm not an expert like you, just an analyst. Unfortunately, reporters are not analysts or even independent thinkers anymore. Popular science reporting is essentially dead, like so much of journalism today.
Thanks. I've noticed these articles and I'm glad you've addressed them. You've restored my faith in medieval warfare and I was even beginning to think that maybe the medieval ages were just a myth. Joking aside, if revisionists get their way, they just may be teaching our grandchildren that.
You guys are weirdly offended by the fact horses were much smaller 500 years ago. My partner is doing this research, why do you all think you can argue you way out of literally measuring the bones of these horses. They just were smaller, end of. There's no secret agenda, just archaeologists measuring bones, which is what they do. Modern horses that we see in pop culture have been subjected to far more advanced selective breeding from the last couple centuries. We still have horses today which are direct decendents of medieval horses, like the Icelandic horses, which have not been interbred for 1000 years. They are ~14 hands high and were what the vikings were using. You can also look at the prezwalski and Mongolian horses, these haven't been selectively bred to be larger either, so they retain their smaller historical size. Also, about the armour, that has been measured. And again, it wouldn't fit onto any modern horse.
But no, they weren't ponies, that's just journalist exaggeration, they looked like horses today. They were just smaller.
@@MrFrogNo3 if your partner is really doing research, then you'd know about the now extinct lines of war horses of Europe that were much bigger than their draft counterparts and modern ponies. The destriers were specifically pulled from bigger, stronger, and more aggressive bloodlines that no longer exist since the knights are gone. Coursers took center stage with cavalry in the gunpowder (flintlock) age and were smaller, lighter, and more agile. The amount of horse lines that were lost to battle in the Napoleonic Wars, not to mention in both World Wars means that we no longer have descendants of those actual chargers
Some revisionists believe that anything before the year 2012 was a myth and that in the 1990s they sprayed a substance all over the world to make people think that they were 60 years old when really they were only 20 and that the substance made their skin wrinkly.
REAL CONVERSATION I HAD WITH SOMEONE BY THE WAY
Who knows maybe. For some reason I thought of that the other day.
I've been raging for this topic for a while. Thanks for making this video in advance.
Whoever made that claim clearly never heard of destriers(war horses).
Destriers are oft overstated in use. Oft avoided in actuality. the Equivalent of the European white elephant.
Or that horses vary wildly in size and that different horses served different roles.
@@Brent-ln9bc Clydesdale were purpose bred within the last three hundred years for draft purposes.
@@Brent-ln9bc Clydesdales are very much a "modern horse" and even if not, that is centuries old, they are in no way suitable for war horses.
Destriers by account are no more than 16 hands, a Clydesdales is at least that height.
You’re absolutely correct and your specific brand of righteous fury is flat out adorable. Which is why I like your channel.
Just an idea for a follow up video on War Horses (possible road trip) of The Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria. While not extremely large horses, they are very powerfully built, the Lipazaner performs every move that would have been used in Warfare.
I've been watching your videos for years, you have provided me with so much knowledge that actually helps me write my fantasy novel taking place in the late medieval/Renaissance country.
Oh and by the way, the large draft horses of today, particularly the French ones were not bred for knights. They were bred that large and heavy only more recently to give them the mass and power to pull heavy loads, particularly in areas with very heavy soils. They are not even able to canter for a prolonged time, totally unsuitable for a knight. They are not suitable to carry heavy load, they are bred to pull loads. Plus in France these heavy horses were bred extra big and massive because the French liked to eat horse meat and the foals of breeds like the contemporary Percheron bulk up rather quickly. So, ultra big and heavy horses are a very recent trend. But there are quite old horse breeds and types, like the Lippizan, the Lusitano, the Murgese and I would assume that the late medieval upper class riding horse was similar to those.
Viking merchant is indeed poggers. Anyway, medieval war horses were very muscular and stubby, so I understand how illustrations can make them look like stubby little ponies. Kinda like how Icelandic horses look like small horses from a bit away, but as soon as you get close they are massive. Good video.
Icelandic horses are ponies comparable to larger modern breeds. What one defines as a pony is somewhat subjective tbh. half the horse riders I know (girls with small horses) insist they ride a horse... often its a pony. Even if some of the m are bastards.
I mean look at Steppe cultures, their horses were smaller than other ones, and look how well they fucked everyone up
technically, all horses look like small horses from a bit away
@@marcogenovesi8570 "...okay, one last time, these ones here are small but those ones out there, are FAR away...."
Medieval artwork is pretty infamous for terrible relative size
"Squire, where is my sword?" Needs to be a regular catch phrase for when you read something mind numbingly idiotic. Awesome video as always!
Thank you for this clarification. I read a similar article in a so called quaility newspaper and was confused. Because it contradicted my information. What you say in this video is about what I thought I would have been like. Plus you added more details to my understanding.
This was one of the most entertaining episodes I've watched. Bravo!!!
It also highlighted something that drives me crazy. Pop articles that oversimplify scientific research cause so many problems. That's why we have so many creationists & evolution deniers particularly in the US. keep up the good work my friend. 👏👏👏
Now just imagine the opposite, knights astride Percherons or Clydesdales. Horses were bred for different purposes just as dogs were. It's as if these people think that Chihuahaus were used as war dogs.
Release a few dozen of the rats in an enemy camp, and your opinion might change. The little ankle biters won't do much damage, but the constant yapping could keep an entire camp awake, and after they've rounded them up and gone to sleep, that's when you raid them, death whistles out.
The Chihuahua is a native American breed, brought across the Bering. The Indians had only a few breeds, and most of them have had the distinctive genes replaced, but the Chihuahua is still noticeably different from European, Indian, or Chinese breeds.
And I thought that Frisians were bred to be destriers, and are about as large as Clydesdales or Percherons.
Honestly, Chihuahaus are already terrifying without being war dogs
Remember the French Poodle STARTED as a hunting house and was bred down to a lapdog.
While the Irish Wolfhound was always huge.
They would be fine war hounds. They can be absolutely terrifying. Imagine having a swarm a Chihuahuas unleashed onto you😳
i can already imagine knights training Shetland ponies to fight in a heavy cavalry melee combat...
One Shetland Pony per feet, you can kinda do it
I could see herds of shetlands being trained to swarm an opponent because those little things are the devil
Isn't it amazing the rapidity of horse evolution from tiny ponies to massive war horses of the Napoleonic wars. Truly the most evolutionary development of any organism known. Mind blown. As a side note my Polish Arab was 17.2, rest of the herd averaged 13 to 15.
I have been awaiting this video for weeks now. Seeing those articles in my news feed really pissed me off!
Thank you!
In Poland we have used horses in mines in the middle ages and there was a looot of them. Also we used horses in woods for transporting lumber (which we use to this day to be honest) and those horses were "pony sized" but also very muscular. I wonder, if the greater number of pony sized horses in England in that period can have any to do with a similar usage of those animals? 🤔
A short horse isn't necessarily a small, weak horse. Far from it. Look at haflingers, for example. They are nowhere near the height of a thoroughbred, but they are extremely muscular and strong. Built like a fire hydrant. Plus, their height makes them easier to mount, and they have a low center of gravity for good maneuvering.
I've ridden quarterhorses that would technically fit the arbitrary height definition of "pony", and they were incredibly athletic animals.
So the media articles that use "pony" are doing so in an inappropriate, pejorative manner.
Mongolian horses, too. Relatively small, but very robustly built.
...are you a dwarf?
Another equestrian here. While this is true, I'd point out that a better comparison would be the Spanish Andalusian/PRE for destriers, and the Irish Connemara for hobbies (i.e. ponies). The Halflinger wasn't developed until the late 19th century (late 1800s), and was heavily refined in later years with Arabian and other European breeds from the original Tyrolese pony, with post-WWII breeders focusing on "shorter, more draft-like" appearances; and the American Quarter Horse wasn't developed until the 1800s as well, from modern Thoroughbreds.
When looking at comparisons to "what medieval knights rode", I feel that it's imperative to look at distinctly older European breeds. The issue with this, however, is that quite a few "breeds" that medieval people rode have since gone extinct, such as the Spanish Jennet and the the Irish Hobby. (Today's Connemara descends from the Hobby.) We also need to discard any European breeds that have changed drastically over time, such as the Friesian of Friesia in Germany, the Percheron of La Perche in France, and Halflinger of Tyrol in Italy, etc.
Lovely as ever to see your passion & research :) It seems clear that the inspiration may have been click-bait, but great to see your work on the subject. I think the single observation you make that I like best is: "The heavier the cavalryman, the bigger the horse." In a related, but tangential observation. I remember some surprise at the idea that the mongol horse's descendant is of quite a modest size. But then we're talking lightly armoured mounted archers who would prioritise nimble, fast and long winded mounts. Not thunderous chargers needed for short bursts of speed. I suspect my reaction was born of the simple fact that our school-based historical education is a perspective based on a very small sample of data (illustrations, texts, and so forth) - it's not that we show our children necessarily misleading images, but if you've only seen a few images of mongol cavalry, those memories can quite easily get blurred in with the images of heavier cavalry styles with more impressive mounts.
Please keep making content. And keep your cool :) Vale
Some years ago my aunt owned some Haflingers. They are technically ponies, but robust and have defenetly of a good size for riding.
I do enjoy how passionate he gets when he gets his teeth into a topic. Great video.
I could be forgetting, but I remember it being talked about how Alexander's army had very large horses, and those 'heavenly horses' being so impressive that the Chinese went to war with the Greeks in Central Asia over them. Not that Alexander is Middle Ages, but I am pretty sure that this is the source of horses in part that the Europeans might have gone back to or at least proves that if there were large horses before the Middle Ages that they should be around still later in history.
Those Heavenly horses were the Akkle-Teke that Mongols wanted from the Turkmenistan people they made a of gold statue a horse to trade for one Akkle-Teke Stallion, Turkmenistan refused, ransacked the Turkmen and stole away with a herd a Akkle Teke horses
Akkle-Teke horse present a very arresting long neck and high head carriage, long backed, lean looking sleek body, with free moving light long legs, gentle, they love people, but swift and willing on their feet, another characteristic of is their dazzling metallic coat that shines in the sun, because they have guard hairs in there coat that reflect sunlight(look up"the most beautiful horse in the world")
The Greeks actually took over and conquered a lot of China, they set up the Qin dynasty; the Qin dynasty originated right exactly during the Greco-Bactrian period from the farthest WEST OUT OF ANY ANCIENT CHINESE DYNASTY (Central Asia region) which means Greeks were behind the Qin dynasty. The Greco-Bactrians were responsible for helping build the terracotta army, introducing standardized coinage and currency, pseudo organized paved road system, better government structure, lots of new religious systems (Taoism-Daoism and Buddhism) etc etc etc
They eventually expanded China to include parts of modern Southern China, which was always considered by the real ancient "Chinese" even after the Qin and Han dynasties to be a backwater wild frontier land underdeveloped and full of hostile backwards tribes.
Dont fall for modern Chinese nationalist lies and revisionism
this was exactly the time heavier breeds were introduced in Europe and generally. Much before medieval times though after classical times. Ancient Greece did have mainly ponies which is why cavalry wasn't really important back then.
@@KnightofAssyria can you provide any sources, whether books or otherwise, so that I can further study this subject? I've been keen to this concept for a while but I've never heard something so specific on the subject. I suspected that the Scytians/Aryans after conquering Indian went up north and then settled around the Gobi Desert and Northern China/Mongolia/Siberia. And I also suspected Alexander the Great to have had some influence since he like many greeks and persians had interactions with Scythians and eastern people. Very cool.
05:35 - I love how they used fantasy armour - The Legend for Genesis 3 and 8 Female(s) by Aeon Soul - to depict a medieval knight. 😀
I immediately recognized it, because in my opinion it is one the best quality and most versatile fantasy outfits available for Daz Studio.
My first thought was that a Haflinger often only counts as a pony because it can be shorter than 1.48 m to the ridge. And they don't look tiny...their ridge is about where my shoulder is. I had a childhood friend who taught me a lot of horse trivia so I know that a pony is not necessarily tiny. The average person probably would think of a very small horse that could only be ridden by children. Noone rides on a shetty...maybe it can pull a small cart.
Also, I mean, shetland ponies are from the shetland isles, and so I guess it is not weird that they find smaller horse bones in Britain...I remember that even today there are still meadows full of little ponies grazing about, and it's probably similar in Iceland and Norway at the fjords... I don't know how old these breeds are, but it's something I consider typical for the coastal regions in the north, not so much for forest areas in the middle of Europe.
But war horses got to England probably only with Normans, who used them for cavalry charges. Anglo-Saxons and Vikings used horses more for transport so they didn´t need so massive a breed.
4:17 the self-restraint of this man is legendary, I almost broke something at this point
I thought that the Clydesdale horse was specially bread for caring knights. And I feel your PAIN!!!!
Thank you great vidio!
Ohh My Goodness, thank you!
Recently I also had the misfortune of seeing (and reading) articles about the medieval war-ponies.
Thank you for debunking this horrendous claim, and always being here for us, as a Counterweight to 'academic sillyness'.
The point about horse barding itself is a trump card in this topic.
It's infuriating to see misinformation thrown about so blithely. Thanks for making videos like this!
Why do I have the sinking feeling that these "journalists" just copy-pasta from a highly inaccurate study, that they just didn't understand...
Yeah I saw those too and the first thing I thought of was the examples of horse armor in museums like the Met. Much bigger than tiny little ponies.
I'm glad we are back to talking about actual history. i think you are right the horses at the medieval and i think especially late medieval period were probably just as big as horses today and in small window of time they were actually probably little bit bigger. The Polish heavy cavalry horse used by hussars was medium-small in comparison to other heavy cavalry horses of the era but they were capable of caring fully armored knight with themselves being armored and still were very fast on the battle field as well as extremely effective. the sources say that when facing infantry hussars were able to literally run the enemies to the ground basically annihilating them and you can't do this without good horses.
I live in Vienna, I can walk down town and see historical horse armour displayed! It's for big horses because....... it's effing big, not for Iceland pony sized steeds.
Imagine not knowing that there's different types of Horses, from Draft/Sumpter horses that were used to carry baggage and other stuff, to light horses such as the English Hobelar Ponies that isn't like how Ponies look, and finally the well fed big war horses that carries the armored knights and having some bardings on top of it.
If you have four horses for a medieval journey, you ride the two big ones because they can handle the weight of tack and rider (and you alternate use). You use the smaller weaker ones for pack animals, because you can trim down their load more.
Great video, but I'm still stuck trying to wrap my head around how a grown adult writing for a publication - for money - would be comfortable calling *1650* the "Medieval Period."
Damn journalist
Most journalists are a joke nowadays
Ti ringrazio per questo video siccome erano apparsi pure a me gli articoli che hai menzionato!
Prego!
Hi Metatron, I absolutely love that I found your channel! Your videos are so well researched and are presented beautifully. Thank you for sharing with us history as an informative and entertaining educational experience. I confess I’m hooked. My 13 year old son (who could not stand learning history) has completely been done a complete 180, and looks forward to your videos and now thinks history is so cool (plz forgive my slang, I’m a Gen X’er), you don’t know how much it means to me seeing my son so engaged.
The other thing to consider when talking about how the Medieval Man was shorter on average than a modern man: In the middle ages your height depended on whether you were rich or not. A serf had an almost guarantee of growing up in a situation where there would be at least one bad harvest year during his preteen / teenage years, and his growth would be stunted because of not getting enough food to properly grow. A Knight would not have that problem, he ate well every year. This is part of the reason why knights were the powerhouses on the battlefield; they were a few inches taller that the common folk.
True but the armor and horse armor that have been found prove that the men and horses would have been bigger than these “researchers and experts” expect. I agree that there were many different horses used in a battlefield.
Had some group photos in my families album of RAF units, the mechanics were about a foot shorter than the Air Crew, you could pick their group out on height alone, middle class diet growing up versus ... Not only until Victorian times but well into the C20th century too.
Not THAT short, they were 5'7 in the earlier middle ages, over time they lost their height towards the end of the middle ages, but at their tallest, they were about as tall as a modern man
I’m baffled by how those writers ignored a simple practice: selection. And selecting the best suited for the job is something that also happen with soldiers, so for certain roles or corps only the biggest men were chosen. Even today, to be selected for Italian Corazzieri a man must be in the higher part of the height spectrum (190cm at least), but going by the line of those articles, as the average height of soldiers is 175cm, I suppose the corazzieri are just a myth…or a bunch of my mini ponies lol
According to those articles, since the average height is shorter than that "alleged" 190 cm, the soldiers were all child-sized!
Destriers were "small" compared to the workhorses we have now. But they sureas hell weren't the horses Steppe people started riding ~3,000 years before knights.
A very well-done debunking, and very entertaining as well. Thanks for your service!
Well, our ancestors - the Norwegian settlers here in Iceland rode and used small breeds. Mind you .. i dont know if they brought them to vikings abroad .. but they rode them like normal utility animals here - and our Icelandic breed is kind of known for being pretty tiny.
Okay, so they analyzed 1964 horse bones. Given the fact that just about 1-5 percent of the population was noble and only 5-10 percent of an army were actually knights, then you can deduce that only a small percentage of the horses in medieval times were actual warhorses.
"They were 4'10'' high (1.47 m), so they were like little ponies!!"
Measuring from the back not the head! 4'10' from the damn horse's back!! So it's like regular modern horse.
There is no way those people can be called journalists, they didn't even bother to find out how to measure a horse.
One would think that mounted men at arms and knights would require big and athletic horses to be able to gallop at high speeds while carrying a man and their equipment buuuut we aren't modern journos and have brains with a function capacity higher than 80 megabytes
I love hearing you speak Italian. Such a beautiful language, and your diction in any language is flawless.
Knowing what I know about horses:
Ponies are generally stalky and are meant for pulling. Ponies were work horses used for plowing, pulling small wagons, sleds, and like Meta brought up, working in confined spaces like mines.
Draft horses, which were what eventually became war horses were HUGE. One of the prettiest draft breeds alive today, the Frisian, could be 17 hands tall. And they were created in the middle ages at some point.
So I have bred and trained horses all my life. Just from the perspective of horse physiology, this claim is ridiculous. A heavily armored knight would have killed a small horse. The size of your horse is directly related to the work the horse must do. Specifically a horse can carry no more than 20% of its own bodyweight. So knowing this it is not difficult for us to determine how large a warhorse must have been. If you are carrying a 160 pound man, you must have a horse that is no less than 800 pounds, so we are looking probably at around 14 hands. Add 200 pounds of armor and equipment, now we must have a horse no less than 1800 pounds. That is a VERY large horse, like the size of a modern Belgian. And is probably going to need to be around 17 hands in height if you expect it to be even remotely mobile. Even still we are looking at the minimum size a horse would have been in order to carry a heavily armored knight, in reality you should be LESS that 20%, that is just the absolute maximum before you start badly damaging the animal's spine and joints.
The disadvantage of an animal of this size is that it is not going to be particularly fast or agile. Hence why they had different breeds for different purposes. If you want to cover a short distance quickly, you want something with a stalkier build (the modern quarter horse for example being the fastest sprinter, going as fast as 55 miles per hour, and is also highly agile) If you want to cover a lot of distance with speed and agility, you want something a bit taller and skinnier. This today is the thoroughbred. So I imagine in a skirmish you would have wanted something around 14.2 to 15 hh, around 1000 pounds or so where as for heavy cavalry you would have needed something over 17hh and weighing close to a ton. a massive and majestic animal to be sure.
David you are making the mistake of placing modern day welfare “requirements “ onto people who didn’t really have much concerns for animal welfare in the modern sense .
A Cob size animal would have done the job easily and on campaign or just on the tournament circuit a bigger horse needs more food.. which is a liability. Keep your Belgians in the carts and fields where they belong sir 😎
Of course, they didn't know about the 20%, so probably horses then would have been overloaded to our modern eyes. The Quarter Horse you mentioned is the purpose bred racing QH. Much different from say, a Ranch-bred. A TB type would not have been too useful as they took too much upkeep and temperaments too hot. A cross with a native breed would be more useful. I could imagine a knight on something like a Clydesdale as this a strong, agile type of heavy horse and they can go like the clappers! We have Clydesdale races for fun and they really get going and their blood really gets up!
@@mashbury No this has nothing to do with modern concerns and ethics. It has to do with what will work and what will harm the animal. As was pointed out in the video, these animals are massive investments (even today they are) and you are not going to engage in practices that will shorten their functional lifespan, not to mention the fact that it takes years to train a horse to the level that is functional on the field of battle.
The 20% rule reflects what is possible. If you go beyond that you are seriously damaging the animal's spine, and its functional lifespan will be dramatically shortened. You have invested what I would imagine to be the equivalent hundreds of thousands of dollars into the training of this horse (because it's not far off from that even today to train a high level horse competing in similar disciplines). Practices that are bad and damaging are not going to continue. This is purely practical. Add on top of that, these people did have a genuine relationship with their horses as well. The claim that medieval people weren't interested in their well-being is garbage. These animals were important to them far more than anyone's horse is today. They lived with them, they trained with them. Performing at the level they did requires an intimate knowledge and connection with the individual animal.
Thank you David, I was hoping an actual equestrian would show up to add their input.
@@DLBBAM what do I know mate... only been doing historical work with horses for 30 years.. .. what ever mate .. funny though .. I never had to spend much time training my horses .. just used to buy ones that did the job and save time.. Oh well .. 🤷♂️... back to the barn then
Knights didnt ride on silly tiny ponies. They rode tall horses bread for their tasks.
Mongols on the other hand conquered Asia on ponies. And the japanese horses also were more ponies than horses. I'd *love* to see/read the reactions of people who were expecting Samurai to ride on large horses if they'd see a movie (for example) with accurate horses.
Weren't there records of Samurai retainers JOGGING into battle next to their Samurai? Have fun trying to do that next to a destrier.
Also there is also that glorious drawing by Albrecht Dürer showing an armorued man at arms on a horse. Dürer is renowned for his accurate drawings.
It genuinely depends. Giant great tall warhorse were at most a very late development. For most the medieval period smaller horse do seem to be the norm.. Shorter stocker build (able to effectively carry armor), without being a comparable to say a draught horse should be expected.
@@tisFrancesfault a smaller horse i'd say for many still wouldn't necessarily qualify as "pony". Meanwhile - again - Mongols or Samurai.
heck i'd bet if movies would hsow them on accurate steeds some dimwits would claim it was an attempt to make them look silly.
True, everything depends on the context. What people usually forget when they compare horses is that the bigger the horse the more it has to eat. At some point grass is not enough and you need to provide fodder. If you don't your bigger horses will gradually lose strength. Therefore if don't have access to fodder or you don't have money for it you should use lighter horses as long as they do the job, hence the popularity of light cavalry on asian steppes.
@@undertakernumberone1 Perhaps, though if one were to go bact to say 1066, and we took the Bayeux tapestry as a source, Horses were quite short Archaeological evidence that I have seen, around that time also shows horses were rather short.
As a history buff and life-long horsemen, THANK YOU! This kind of misinformation and complete ignorance drives me insane. Historical peoples were not idiots and many really knew horses and their anatomy well. As seen by your sources in the video. For horse riders, the correct size for the correct job is so important. Information like this can damage the work experts and educators do to improve the lives of modern day horses.
Late to the party, but THANK YOU. Common sense is unfortunately not common. As a horsewoman myself, these articles drive me bonkers as well. While a good seat is generally speaking more important for the continued health of a horse under the saddle than the weight of the rider (plus a good saddle), thinking that a pony could deal long-term with an armored knight on its back is simply insane, they wouldn't have been able to hold their balance either and would not have been able to charge without stumbling. To me such articles illustrate how rare it is today for people to have handled or interacted with a horse, compared to earlier centuries. The difference between having a muscular half-blood under you or a pony - worlds apart. Same between handling a well-trained horse that knows what it was doing under the saddle and a horse that was mainly on the meadows. Those people can't imagine how much training and maintenance must have gone into a Destrier to make them suitable for a battlefield! There is a reason why trained Lipizzian stallions were considered such good warhorses (and why the race nearly died out) - they are so disciplined that they don't shy or panic and were the nearest equivalent to old warhorses to be found in the last century. These experts should get a few riding lessons under their belt before writing nonsense. Sry, preaching to the choir here but the topic is making me wonder about today's 'article' writers.
@@chemina8541 haha preach away! Totally agree with you on all counts there. And today’s writers just do not put in the real effort and research before publishing. On top of that so many “historians” nowadays are inserting heavy bias on historical events and people that the common journalist and reader may not realize is just an opinion, not fact.
as someone who has experienced shetland ponies, they are not to be derided. they are surprisingly strong, as a teen i was seriously overweight at 19 stone. the Shetland I used to exercise for a friend not only had no problem carrying me, it would do so for longer and further than I could cope with. the problem I could foresee with shelties is they are too damn smart to put themselves in harms way. this was edge of town with very wide verges way wider than the road. If the horse considered the trafic too much, she had many ways of unseating me, some quite complex, like pulling the left styrup forward and turning rapidly to the right. thanks for another thoughtful analysis
I don't study medieval history off and on growing up. I've always remembered the horses being similar to Clydesdales.