Medieval war horses "no bigger than ponies"

[Kyng]

https://phys.org/news/2022-01-medieval-w...ature.html

Medieval warhorses are often depicted as massive and powerful beasts, but in reality many were no more than pony-sized by modern standards, a new study shows.

Horses during the period were often below 14.2 hands high, but size was clearly not everything, as historical records indicate huge sums were spent on developing and maintaining networks for the breeding, training and keeping of horses used in combat.

A team of archaeologists and historians searching for the truth about the Great Horse have found they were not always bred for size, but for success in a wide range of different functions—including tournaments and long-distance raiding campaigns.

Researchers analyzed the largest dataset of English horse bones dating between AD 300 and 1650, found at 171 separate archaeological sites.

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Yeah, this honestly doesn't surprise me. After all, there's been almost a millennium of selective breeding of horses since then - which will likely have made them bigger and stronger.

Although, I'm not holding my breath for horses to be depicted like this in TV/movies set in the Middle Ages. Even if it's more accurate, it's far less dramatic !

[Opal Fruit]

This came up on my phone earlier. Pretty interesting piece of info, but indeed not too surprising.

[JHG]

I guess it depends on the horse:

[Kyng]

I guess it depends on the horse:

Thanks for sharing: I watched this during lunchtime today! It's an interesting video - although, given that it was made before this study came out, I'm curious as to whether he'd be willing to update it with the new information.

(Then again, he did say that ancient Roman horses were probably no bigger than ponies - so, it wouldn't need too much updating!)

[JHG]

Aaand Metatron says not to buy into this too quickly: