GRASSLAND AND FARMLAND—SMITH 373 
head down. Pictures of war chariots show they did not carry much 
load, and Roman records verify. 
Early uses of the horse sift down to this—meat supply, milk animals, 
assistant to the herdsman, the pet of princes, for pageantry, religious 
ceremonies, and war—especially war. 
The horseman with a two-piece bow was the greatest “blitz” before 
gunpowder. This bow seems to have brought cavalry to the fore. 
The horseman with a lance was not so potent. This bow brought 
the horse to his Golden Age, to his zenith as an influence in the affairs 
OL 
: \ 
:f> Bane! 
THE EMPIRE OF ATTILA = ABOUT «so I 2 ee 
ae 
Ficure 12.—The lightly shaded area shows the bounds of the empire of Attila, the 
Hun, about A. D. 450. The heavily shaded area shows present area of Hun- 
garian language. (Base map copyright by Rand McNally & Company, Chicago.) 
of man. From the beginnings of cavalry with the Scythians, about 
the ninth century B. C., to the date of the effective use of gunpowder, 
more than 2,000 years later, the cavalryman of the Eurasian grasslands 
almost continuously harassed the settled cultures upon the grassland 
rim and often smashed them at will. Thus the horse, the great contri- 
bution of the Eurasian grasslands to history, had several millennia 
during which his relation to sedentary societies was not primarily in 
the field of economics, but in the field of war; not primarily at defense, 
but rather the war of offense. The horse was an instrument of con- 
quest and destruction of peoples, cities, governments, and social 
organizations. 
