History of the horse collar

[blue80]

We are home schooling, for several reasons, but largely because we as parents just enjoy learning with and teaching our own children.

Today I learned in “unit preview” that supposedly in 400 BC the Chinese were the first to develop horse collars anatomically correct to allow best use of draft and power for working horses in the field. In comparison to “western civilizations” style that used only a rope around the neck or a plow tied by rope to the horse’ tail for another THOUSAND years before they developed collars for horses. Apparently the Chinese kept a tight rein on their technologies, including the crossbow, horse collar and many other things.

Where according to archeologists, the Mayans had a form of writing that has never been decifered, had extensive astronomy abilities, indoor plumbing in their homes, but used no beasts of burden and never even developed the wheel. All the movement of dirt and material for their enormous building projects was supposedly in baskets by human power.

Just found that all interesting for some reason. We all have gifts, but are all a little different….

[Big Horses]

It never ceases to amaze me how “advanced” some of the old societies were!!
John

[jac]

Apparantly when the Romans left Britain we managed to lose ability to make the wheel in what was known as the dark ages !!!!:eek:..
John

[bivol]

@jac 21579 wrote:

Apparantly when the Romans left Britain we managed to lose ability to make the wheel in what was known as the dark ages !!!!:eek:..
John

i think (think, so i don’t know for sure) wheels were still made, but they were crude and heavy anglo-saxon wheels, taken with the saxons when they crossed the channel. no reason to believe there nations didn’t know the wheel.
only, with fall of Rome many roads fell into disrepair, and with the usual mud in the countryside, pack horses were better suited than wagons.

the roman level of wheelwright was not again reached in europe until the 19th century.

about the mayans, i don’t think they relied on muscle power alone. see, i think many ancient civilizations additionally relied on now lost technologies connected with manipulating the weight of stone blocks through frequency (meaning: musical instruments). one such case was recorded in Tibet in the 30s i think, there oxen were used to haul a stone block neatr the site, and then a chorus of priests with instruments aimed at the block began. the block lifted up and set on its place on top of the hill.

[simon lenihan]

They could point their tin whistles at the boulder and play until the cows came home and it still would not move. This was the job of the slaves and pesants, this was the priests way of getting out of doing a hard days graft.
simon lenihan

[Tim Harrigan]

@bivol 22317 wrote:

think, one such case was recorded in Tibet in the 30s i think, there oxen were used to haul a stone block neatr the site, and then a chorus of priests with instruments aimed at the block began. the block lifted up and set on its place on top of the hill.

Frozen Loggers Song. And a little help from the oxen.

[near horse]

@Tim Harrigan 22326 wrote:

Frozen Loggers Song. And a little help from the oxen.

Nice one Tim! And I thought that song was only a curse in my head.

We recently got to visit Stonehenge and I can’t imagine even a “20 mule power” oxen team moving some of those things. Not to mention how they “lifted” the lintel stones up! Also, what in the world could they have been using for “rope” – hemp?

My best explanation would be that they employed the Flintstone’s brontosaurus steamshovel:rolleyes:

With regard to the lack of use of animal draft power in the new world, Jared Diamond might address that in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel”. Really an interesting take on why western European culture/technologies etc have come to be dominant/successful in the modern era. (That’s a pretty lousy synopsis but …) Read it this winter.

BTW – when is the earliest documented sign of the wheel being used? Just wondered. IMHO – I might guess it would come from using logs to roll a heavy object – a slice of that log or round could be seen as a wheel.

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, the vikings thought at the winter solstace (christmas?) they needed to have a festival to encourage odin the fly across the night sky with his team (santa claus?) and bring back the sun. so they would burn the biggest stick of wood they had which was their yule log. yule is the norse wood for wheel. using a log for a wheel seems to be a simple idea unless no one has ever done it before, and then it might be genius. probably a concept that popped up all over the known, and unknown world at different times without interaction between the different cultures. anyway, happy christmas, mitch

[sanhestar]

Hello,

regarding wheels:

for the middle eastern region it seems that the Hyksos where the first to use the wheel and also horse-drawn carriages. That’s what made them a superior military power at around 4000 B.C.

The Egyptians who where much more advanced in terms of education, architecture, society at that time still used logs or sleds to move loads.

[jac]

Geoff if you have ever combined linseed or flax as its also known you would see how hemp would make good rope. that stuff winds up real tight and is super strong..
John

[near horse]

Hey John,

It’s just that those stones are up to 50T – hard to imagine what you could pull with. I do know of flax (and other plant fibers) that will wrap the cylinder on the combine up tight.

I was looking at some old photos of harvesting linen from flax. Really a pretty cool process – retting and all that. Amazing that you could get such nice material from the stems of a plant like that.

[jac]

Pretty impressive what the ancients managed. I have often wondered about those stones too and read somewhere that perhaps earth banks were built up on one side then when all the top stones were in place the soil was removed… would be easier than trying to hoist them mabey…
John

[Stable-Man]

The Chinese also managed to feed at least 400 million on less land with organic methods, something a lot of people consider impossible these days.

[Author]

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