Writing – Page 5 – THE LEGEND OF THE GREAT HORSE trilogy

History as an afterthought

History is an inexact science to be sure, relying at least partially on hearsay and filtered through the political whims of its era. History is also old in the physical sense of the word, an unattractive quality to some.

But the past isn’t dead. As William Faulkner said, “it isn’t even past.”

Yes, the actors are gone, places have closed or vanished. Attitudes and beliefs have also changed … but it is this sort of mental change that is the value of knowing history: to discover what fails, and what succeeds.

A society’s shared knowledge of history can be compared to a person’s memories. It would be a tragedy for an adult to lose the lessons of youth, to forget what happens when your hand meets a hot stove or a light socket. We could not expect an adult without memories of prior experience to prosper, or even to survive very long. Human society may be no different.

There is nothing inherently needful about human society on Earth: nature proceeds quite well without us. Mankind has the tendency to forget the value of cooperation and commonwealth and retreat to our primitive tribal tendencies as frightened creatures suffering Hobbesian lives–“nasty, brutish, short.” These cycles have been called “dark” ages, and these times of forgetting have occurred throughout human history. The “Middle Ages” are a recent example, a backward era that existed between antiquity’s civilization and our own. Human progress is not a straight line.

If mankind had never discovered fire, or the wheel, or horsemanship, or any of the multiplicity of specializations and customs and insights that make up civilized life–the forests and plains would be there, the world would still turn.

Some may see the world today and mistake success for inevitability. But there is nothing inherently necessary about human civilization on Earth. There is no observable feature of nature to preserve us in our ignorance. We prosper by our hard-learned knowledge, but the cliff is always there to fall from if we forget.

Equestrian Sport: ancestor of Circuses, Fairs, Parades & Festivals

Last weekend I visited our local Boston racetrack, Suffolk Downs, for an instant trip back in time. The white fences, the green landscaped infield, the mixed scents of horses, concessions and people, the growing excitement as a race approaches … it was a scene both nostalgic and modern.

Festivals and horses are an ancient tradition. Milling crowds, vendor booths and concessions, programs and barkers–the moving color and pageantry of our favorite public events trace a lineage through mounted cavalry exhibitions and roaring chariot racing “circuses” of antiquity.

At-The-Cirque-Fernando-Rider-On-A-White-Horse_Toulouse-Lautrec
Not so much has changed: clay tablets were once sold to eager audiences by shouting ushers of Roman times. Triumphal “parades” of horses drawing chariots marked victory in ancient ceremonies, and horseback entourages of through Medieval towns were an occasion of spectator celebration that continues in the parades of today.

Equestrian exhibitions of dressage in Renaissance Europe were the predecessors of the three-ringed Circuses beginning well before modern Barnum & Bailey and others. Even the modern Fair owes its beginning to harvest festivities with horse-racing and other competitive spectacles orbited by farmers’ stands and open-air markets.

Today equestrian sport has reinvented itself to keep pace with the modern world, and the ancients would have been amazed at the level of partnership seen in our modern horses and riders. Today’s international equestrian sports place the welfare of the horse at the core, and the “thrill” of older sports like chariot racing and jousting have been replaced by new thrills in highly competitive, colorful and technical sports that demand the utmost partnership with the animal.

It is amazing–and heartening–to see the reinvention of horsemanship in our modern age. The crowds have changed, the sports have changed, but the atmosphere and tradition of the festival continues in echoes of what has gone before.

Through the Looking Glass of History

Why I wrote “The Legend of the Great Horse”

A tragedy sparked The Great Horse trilogy (of which Eclipsed by Shadow is the first volume). I came to know of this sad event because I lived in Cambridge, MA, where it occurred.

It happened in the 1990’s as a wave of corporatization washed over Harvard Square, which was at the time a vibrant, diverse, spirited bright spot of educational culture situated near the heart of Harvard Yard. Due to the end of rent control, incoming corporate chains and commercial development replaced the great old used bookstores in Harvard Square, which housed decades of professor libraries on their shelves and in high-piled boxes and book stacks.

A trove of civilization’s knowledge, irreplaceable in aggregate, telling the story of the decades of the twentieth century in first person. Walking along the crowded aisles and browsing historical works was like running your fingers through treasure that was never to be yours—or anyone’s.

Happily, people haven’t stopped reading or buying books, and a few of the old stores do still survive around Harvard. You can still stoop and step down to get inside often cave-like entrances, to the honeycomb of ceiling-tall smooth-worn wooden shelves completely filled with reams of books, multi-varied colors in a celebration of thought.

History books can be the most colorful of all, and they noticeably contain horses. In all of human history, since prehistoric times of cave paintings, some successful part of mankind has had horses. Horses have adapted to human needs in every era throughout history, from pack animals to chariot teams–and yet have not essentially changed at all.

Horses are not domesticated in the sense of cats and dogs, but still retain full basic instincts. That inner permanence has made the horse a cultural barometer of sorts: flourishing horsemanship is very often associated with successful society. The reverse is also true, and horsemanship can be lost to barbarism. (ie, Eclipsed by Shadow, Bk 1)

The idea of The Legend of the Great Horse came from the ancient belief that horses were a gift from the supernatural. The time-traveling ability of the Great Horse is inspired and informed by the ancient legends. Flight, mobility and transcendent transportation are symbolized in the horse: time-travel is a development of that role.

The story of human history is one of many worlds, and the horse has galloped through them with us. The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy is a celebration of the adventures our horses have shared with us.

It has been an exciting ride!

The Looking Glass of History is a Mirror

I recently wrote that the spark to my writing “Eclipsed by Shadow” was triggered by the corporatization of Harvard Square and the loss of its venerable old bookstores. It was alarmingly easy to relate ancient nomadic destruction of religious settlements to the commercial invasion of these hallowed shelves. Both invaders had as their object mere material gain, and neither saw worth in the defenseless.

store-window My fascination with history was fueled by the doomed abundance of the historical record preserved in those sleepy bookstores. I was learning that history not only repeated but it echoed. As Faulkner said, the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past. It seems more evident today, twelve years later, as we watch world events take stunning turns that defy logic or intent. Reality does not correspond to our wishes or beliefs: it is necessary for humanity to correspond to the reality of human nature and social dynamics.

I began to see the trial and error component of human society, and discovered that civilization’s progress was not so much a smooth path upward as a broken one with pits and valleys. Societies grew as they learned, and as they grew they corrupted and lost their lessons and finally perished. Over and over again.

So what made the Harvard bookstore demolition so tragic in my view was not just the loss of the threads of our historical conversation, but that the act itself was already evidence of the process of forgetting. Unfortunately, what makes the 21st Century truly different from other times is the penalty for this kind of forgetting. Crowded humanity has come to a place when it can effectively destroy itself; our technology is too advanced for us to revert to failed ideas and patterns.

How will we avoid the old pitfalls if we cannot remember them? That was the problem that intrigued me: the answers are in the pages of history, if we can only be persuaded to look.

cavalry-horses

I wanted a way to thread history together, and looked for clues in the gilded pages of those ill-fated history books. A cohesive clue must be discoverable in all those old books, something nearly universal to all humanity. Perhaps an invention like the wheel, maybe music, or clothing, or food … if there were only some common link somehow obscured and hidden within all these colorful pages with their images of countless horses…

Horsemanship is a Mirror of Civilization

Chariots of early history (16th century BC)

This is my third “Mirror” post in a row, and where I finally explain the use of the metaphor and close the barn door after it.

In the first post of this Mirror trilogy, I mentioned becoming interested in reading about history while browsing the shelves of the doomed used bookstores in Harvard.

I didn’t and don’t have answers about what history people should remember, or what conclusions should be drawn. I am simply interested in knowing about factual history and discussing it. That interest led to the idea of The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy.

My blog’s “Mirror” Trilogy Concludes

Horses were a common factor in almost every time from primitive man and antiquity to the Renaissance and the American West. The animal has literally been with mankind every step of the way. As someone who competed in equestrian sports and worked in the horse industry, I found this to be an example of common knowledge not commonly explored.

Horsemanship was not an obvious process to humanity: it took thousands of years for mankind to learn to control a horse as a rider. While the first uses of horses are misty and inconclusive, truth be told early horsemanship was a dog’s breakfast of nose-rings, superstition and brutality. So poor were the prospects of the first mounted riders ending up where (and how) they wished to arrive, that as a practical matter driving appears to have been the main use for horses in the early days of civilization.

This changed in the last millenia B.C. with a new kind of horsemanship based on working with the horse in an empathetic and humane way. The horse responded to empathetic methods so well that the new art, today called “dressage,” led to a revolution in mounted riding. As the human consciousness arced up our horsemanship advanced to new levels of cooperation and partnership.

da Vinci’s “Rearing Horse”

However, when Rome fell into centuries of brutalized Dark Ages, dressage was lost to Western Civilization. In fact, dressage was one of the “rediscovered” Classical arts that sparked the new age of the European Renaissance. Riding schools were set up and Riding Masters emerged as students in the laboratory of the ménage. Horsemanship recovered its humane component and advanced to unprecedented heights of sport and art.

The history of horsemanship seems to highlight the relationship between empathy and human progress. It is fascinating to see how horses have adapted to the different stages of human development; horses are not only a true link with our past but a reflection of their times. Progress in horsemanship has mirrored the progress of mankind itself.

It makes for a fascinating study–and the greatest canvas on which to tell a story.

“On the Rocks” | Horses in Cave Art

This post begins a timeline to discuss the various eras traveled in “Eclipsed by Shadow,” and the rest of “The Legend of the Great Horse” trilogy. The first era is Pre-History.

Man’s long, colorful relationship with the horse is revealed in one of humanity’s oldest creative impulses: Art. The equine image has adorned virtually every medium of artistic conception throughout history, from prehistoric caves and pottery to paintings, sculpture, music, and literature. Even in our modern automated age, horses have made the successful leap to electronic “new media” of teevee, film and video games.

From a historical perspective, it is fascinating to realize how much retained knowledge of our past is owed to art. The consciousness of a culture is embedded in the art it leaves behind, and artwork is painstakingly preserved for posterity. Horses have stirred human imagination since before recorded history, so art tells the story of horsemanship—and civilization—in a comprehensive visual thread.

The earliest art is the cave painting, and horses are a predominate theme. These prehistoric images give bright glimpses into the shadows of humankind’s veiled beginnings—surviving samples date back over 30,000 years. “Rock art” is famous for depictions of horses and other animals central to the world of primitive man, and some of the prehistoric images reveal genuine artistic quality. The purpose for these drawings is unknown, but various possibilities include the recording or transmission of information, religious ceremonies or superstitious “magical” rites. Whatever the explanation, cave art represent first rays of creative light peering out before the dawn of civilization.

Most cave paintings are crude, but there exist works that rise above mundane scratchings. The most sophisticated and “sublime” cave paintings transcend time, revealing an artistic spirit already intact in pre-historic man. It is as if art truly does touch upon some indefinable and ageless spark of the cosmos. As Pablo Picasso himself said upon viewing the famous Lascaux caves, “We have discovered nothing.”

The Paradox of Horses in War

One thing you notice when researching historical fiction like “Eclipsed by Shadow” is how much human history is owed to the horse. Civilization advanced through adapting to the horse’s outlook.

Horsemanship is a civilized encounter with an alien mind. Horses are a “prey” species whose code is: “he who quickly runs away, lives to run another day.” The horse is perpetually alert, suspicious and ready to flee, and 6000 years of domestication have not changed this basic instinct.

The horse is an unlikely creature to ride into the chaos of battle, yet no animal so conjures the image of war. Horsemanship is one of mankind’s oldest and most perfected technologies, and the battlefield was its testing ground for thousands of years. It would seem an impossible feat to ask a timid, flighty animal to carry men into a smoking, stinking cacophony of fire and noise—yet that is exactly the result needed, and produced.

The Book of Job in Bible has a passage which relates this paradox.

“Hast thou given the horse strength?
Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?”

Of course the horse is only an instrument; war is an invention of man. Strangely, the speed and physical strength of the animal made him a formidable weapon, but the great challenge of horsemanship through the ages was how to get this four-legged weapon onto the battlefield at all. Anyone who has seen a horse “shy” or bolt in terror from a blowing leaf will understand the achievement of enlisting cooperation from what is essentially a saddled rabbit.

Skittishness in horses varies between individuals and isn’t completely explainable, as with Saki’s famous “Brogue,” a horse so named “in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid of.” According to the author’s description: “Motors and cycles he treated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows, piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted too aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives, turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation of the zigzag course of forked lightning.”

The secret of man’s partnership with the horse is trust. A wild band of equines operates through friendships and roles, and with proper instruction the trained horse learns to place his rider in the leadership position. This trust must be earned through the process of schooling, and can easily be lost, but it is one of the miracles of riding that only through an exchange of trust can the incredible potential of a horse’s ability be unlocked.

Show Jumping has a story to tell

I recently watched the live video feeds from two major international jumping events, The Syracuse Invitational and the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. The horses look great, the riders are skilled, the competition level is high and humane. Both are well-run by innovative management.

The only lack was in the Announcing. Show jumping is like a storybook with pictures: it must be narrated. The story needs to be told.

Those who already love the sport will forgive transgressions against their spectator interests, but that is no reason for complacency. The key to creating new fans is engaging them.

Entertaining spectators at a horse show is as easy as talking to them about horses. This is not “easy” at all, in reality, as it requires talent combined with professionalism and love for horses and the sport. However, it would be pay great dividends for the sport to develop just such talent.

How Horsemanship Drove the Progress of Civilization

Our relationship with the horse predates literacy, but both tomb relics and modern records agree that most of history’s leading societies possessed the highest skill in horsemanship. Clearly there is more to a horse than meets the eye.

Equestrian skill was important for prowess in battle, and advantage could be attained by advances in horse care, riding, training, breeding, equipment, etc. The horse represented potential for producing enormous gains in productivity, and societies best at tapping that potential were the most successful.

One of the earliest civilizations, the Hittites, were a society known for their ability in building and using chariots, and grew to dominance in the 18th Century BC. Hittites were bested by Egyptians who used a new, lighter chariot design in the Battle of Kadesh in 1274, which was an epic Ancient World clash involving an estimated 5,000 chariots.

The Egyptians were eclipsed by the Greeks, and a superior philosophy of horsemanship may well have played a role. The Greek general Xenophon wrote On Horsemanship, the earliest surviving work on empathetic riding we now call dressage, which explains the humane method of schooling which produced their victorious cavalry.

Horsemanship fell to brutality in the Dark Ages, a symptom of a weakness the equine-centered Mongolian tribes under Genghis Khan were able to exploit as they overran Europe, India and the Middle East in the 13th century with huge armies of light horses.

Xenophon’s “On Horsemanship” was re-discovered in the 1400’s and helped ignite an interest in Classical thought which led to the Renaissance. 15th century Spaniards romanticized riding and treated it as an art form—a revolution of ideas from the brute servitude of Middle Age mounts—and their superior horsemanship was marked with triumph in the age of Conquistadors.

The 16th century Riding Master Pluvinel helped France take the lead in the equestrian arts with the development of the Haute Ecole, or High School of dressage, and the famous Airs Above the Ground. Today the contest continues in the form of international equestrian sport, where success still serves as a metaphor for a nation’s predominance.

The Long, Colorful Road of Horsemanship

The Legend of the Great Horse traces horsemanship from its earliest beginnings. The premise of the story is that Meagan, a horse-interested teenager of modern day, is whisked back in time to relive history … on horseback. As she travels in “jumps” from the earliest days of man’s association with horses, Meagan and the reader experience the changes in horsemanship that mirrored the advance of civilization.

A hallmark of skilled modern riding is that it looks “easy,” but it has not always been this way. The casual spectator watching well-groomed horses cantering a jumping field or half-passing down the centerline may be forgiven believing things such as “the horse is doing all the work” or “anyone could do it” etc. Riding looks easy when done well because the rider remains in balance with the horse, maintaining a fluid rhythm with the mount’s athletic motion. This is not how horsemanship has looked through most of history, and nothing we now take for granted about riding was obvious or simple for humans to discover.

The “Greek Seat”

The origins of horseback riding are lost in the mists of time, but using the horse to pull wagons, carts and chariots represented the first phase of practical horsemanship. Mounted horsemanship does not appear in clear view until antiquity, and after at least 3000 years of development it wasn’t terribly impressive. The horses were guided with nose-rings by a rider who sat far back toward the horse’s hindquarters, though the Greeks modified this by inching forward to sit on the middle of the horse’s back. It literally took the human race thousands of years to discover where, exactly, to properly sit on horseback.

To humans, horses possess an alien mind, and what seems obvious today was not “obvious” at all. As one example, stirrups were not invented until after the fall of the Roman Empire—which itself was more than 25,000 years from the days that prehistoric man’s preoccupation with the animal was shown by painting in caves. First came a “toe loop” which developed in India (c. 500BC) for the holding of the rider’s big toe. A few centuries later nomadic “Sarmatians” of southern Russia and the Balkans invented a single stirrup for use in mounting. Over the next half-millennium, Asia brought the stirrup to fruition; it was copied by Europeans and revolutionized war.

One might consider that our ancestors were not the most clever ponies in the stable, but the reason for the long period of development was that advanced horsemanship required changes in mankind’s thinking. As humanity grew sufficient empathy to discover advanced horsemanship, the modern world also began a rapid transformation into the modern age.