Multi-Species Worlds in Fantasy: a Thought Excercise

[NecronLord]

Hmm in further thought I see new problems. One is that fantasy just utterly loves to have fully developed late Medieval cavalry and horses no matter the actual intended date or development. Tolkin IIRC partly avoided that by specifying mainly mail rather then plate armor but I don't think he was consistent on it. Even full mail suits would be excessively heavy for early cavalry in any event.

Tolkien has no plate, anywhere, nor breastplates, or anything other than mail and helmets for everyone, as far as I know. Horse riding has bit, bridle and stirrup, in Rohan at least.

[Sea Skimmer]

There's a reason the Cataphractii didn't develop until, what, the 300-400 AD's? even though the Romans had the technology for them before then.

It was closer to 300 BC that the earliest forms appeared, with a fairly light level of armor as far as we can tell but extensive coverage of such protection, but that's still 1,000 years into the Iron Age! The early Cataphract were never very numerous though, which suggests that probably even with the selective breeding on a massive scale in south west-central Asia only a small fraction of the horses produced were actually suitable for the role. Over time the yields so to speak, improved in proportion of both physical size and number. But this was very slow going.

Something key behind this though is that warhorse breeding is a lot more complex then simply selecting for size. Obviously speed also matters, but more importantly the horse has to be hardy with heavy weights on its back and the harsh rigorous of a campaign (the damn things really never are) and that was far more difficult and never entirely resolved to this day. Heavy war horses were generally low on endurance but more hardy, because while you could breed a big warmblooded horse it'd probably just die on campaign. However taken to the extreme as it was by ~800-1000 AD Europe it meant you ended up with a horse that was really only meant for one big charge, and not capable of other cavalry roles.

It is not for nothing that the Cataphract appeared in a very warm dry climate, horses are prone to disease and simply do better in warm weather. That's a major reason why heavy cavalry appeared in the east earlier then it did in western Europe. Though another factor was simply that open plains are an easier and cheaper place to breed horses. As long as you can control enough land you can simply herd them around to graze and control reproduction by removing undesirable horses from specific herds, rather then carefully mating them in pens.

Meanwhile the earliest cavalry used chariots for good reason, you couldn't ride the horses worth a damn at all. They were just too small. But that was like 3,500 BC or some such. Still not that old at all compared to the evolution of man! We'd long since wiped out the Neanderthals by then.

We are clearly talking about different periods. You are talking about the very early iron age where as most fantasy seems to happen in the early middle ages (circa 10th century or so) at the earliest and right up until the high middle ages.

I agree, but the original question was about getting up to 'iron age technology' and the Iron Age is generally considered to have ended around ~700 AD. Because by then people understood how to make steel weapons and armor, even though most ferrous metalworking remained pure (sorta) iron. Of course some steel appeared much earlier but it wasn't understood and of extremely erratic quality until the 19th century. You needed steel to make stuff like full plate armor and really long swords work as are the staple of classical fantasy. A lot of other technology, including bigger and better horses for plowing as well as riding helped enable this and the economics to produce it all. Synergy of technology and economics, as warfare always is.

[Simon_Jester]

I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster thought of the medieval period as also being "Iron Age" and not "Steel Age" or whatever, though.

[Formless]

Yeah, that terminology kind of stops being used after "iron age". If we kept using it I then I don't know what age we're in-- the aluminum age? The titanium age? The steel age, since we primarily use steel still? Besides, steelworking is arguably an extension of ironworking.

Anyway, I don't think its worth getting that obsessed with the distinction, since the central question can be extended all the way up to the Renaissance or even modern civilization if you wanted to extend it. Most of the really important developments as far as racial interactions go start right at the stone age and the state of affairs would likely, IMO, be decided by the end of the bronze age when true empires started to appear in real life. Iron age seemed like the right term for what you see in Fantasy, since most fantasy authors and gamers don't know the difference between the migration era, viking era, medieval era, and Renaissance. And anything later doesn't seem to exist except in the Caribbean.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, that terminology kind of stops being used after "iron age". If we kept using it I then I don't know what age we're in-- the aluminum age? The titanium age? The steel age, since we primarily use steel still? Besides, steelworking is arguably an extension of ironworking.

Were totally in the plastic/polymer age. Agree on most of this if not all of it being settled by the time the bronze age was hit.