cybalist message #120cybalist: Odp: Cowpokes and Centaurs.The question about 'goading herds' made me to recollect an interesting
fact. There are petroglyphs of the Bronze Age
at Saymaly-Tash in Tien Shan (Middle Asia). Some reasons allow to classify the older layer of the petroglyphs as early IE.
People goading animals, which are harnessed into miniature chariots (or, better to say, small carts ), are pictured. Every
person pokes an animal (one of the pair harnessed) into ... (you guess where) with a goad.
A great lot of strange details. Chariots-carts are very small, two-wheeled, flat and three-cornered, but have a real pole and a
yoke. Wheels are very small too (less than a human head) and seem to have no spokes. The people (the men - penes are shown) have
long hair, it seems that hair are flying in the wind. Everybody has something long with a knob (a mace ?) in his belt (pardon,
belts are nor shown). Nobody is standing on the chariot, everybody follows it with the reins in the left hand. Chariots are
shown not in "plan composition" as typical IE did, but in "profile composition" (by the way, like Hittite did).
Try to guess, which animals are harnessed. Easier to say who is absent: probably only the pig and the elephant. You can find
there harnessed bulls, goats, horses (not so much), probably other equids, rams, even camels. As a rule the teams are unpaired,
i.e. with 2 animals of different species.
A crazy picture, isn't it?
If the list members find this topic worth discussing, I can give a hypothetical explanation of these pictures basing on the IE
mythology. I could try to copy some of pictures as well.
Alexander Stolbov
http://siem.newmail.ru