470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 64 



easterly migrations of thousands of miles through a thousand years, by 

 which time they reached the Ordos country of the Yellow River. 

 Within this time the civilizations of the Near East had learned the 

 survival value of cavalry, and the Chinese finally learned the same 

 lesson. They became an equestrian nation in all its elite grades. 

 Expeditions were sent into Turkestan to bring back these "horses of 

 heaven." One of the. Pazirik felts, so miraculously preserved in the ice 

 of an Indo-European grave since some hundreds of years B.C. in 

 Siberia, shows a gay cavalier with impeccable military moustache on 

 his Arab-type steed, meeting a seated man of Mongol type in Mongol 

 dress. 



Even the bronze art of the Indo-European nomad traveled over 

 this whole region. These people knew their animals : just as a Navaho 

 Indian boy today does not need to look at a horse to draw it in any 

 posture, so the Indo-Europeans thought their animals — horses, cattle, 

 sheep, goats — in lifelike simple terms ; yes, but wild animals were of 

 immense importance to them as well, whether ungulate or carnivore, 

 and the dramatic moment of the lion's attack on the stag or antelope 

 is often captured in a stylized but dynamic bronze plaque. There 

 are the Scythian bronzes of the Kuban, the animal bronzes of Luris- 

 tan, and at the eastern end the bronzes of the Ordos bend, which show 

 a remarkable sensitiveness to animal form. The involved twisting 

 stylized representation can be found also in the Celtic and Nordic 

 scrollwork in metal and stone on the Atlantic seaboard. Tamara 

 Talbot Rice has brought out this wide spread of nomad art in her 

 book on the Scythians. 



The archeologists have produced much of this material for us and 

 set it in perspective, but zoologically they have not done so well. I 

 suggest that it is up to zoologists to examine it with care, so that elk are 

 not called stags, antelopes deer, or Urial sheep ibexes. The Saiga 

 antelope also appears in these bronzes, unrecognized as such, and 

 crested cranes seem of some significance. I myself have a complete 

 Luristan bit, the cheek pieces of which are representations of elk. 

 The use by the elk of the two posterior toes has been faithfully ob- 

 served by this bronze-caster of nearly 3,000 years ago. How did this 

 get into the Zagros Mountains? Had it come from the Caucasus? 

 I also have what must be one of the earliest surviving representations 

 of a peacock from Amlach in the Elburz country south of the Caspian. 

 Forgive my digression, but I hope this nomad animal art will be 

 examined in relation to possible distribution of species in the past and 

 to ecological history. 



Once the Mongols became equestrian, the backward, westward surge 

 began, culminating in the empire of Genghis Khan which frightened 

 Europe and conquered China for a spell until Kublai was himself 



