Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by philwelch 910 days ago
Sure; mounted warfare existed for centuries before stirrups were invented. Actually it's not entirely clear whether the Proto-Indo-Europeans actually rode the horses or just used them to pull chariots.
1 comments

Did mounted warfare exist before stirrups? The bronze age was all about chariots, and had little or no mounted combat. I'm not sure if that was because of a lack of stirrups or because horses simply hadn't been bred large enough.

The big question is of course whether Alexander the Great's famous hetairoi used stirrups or not. According to [0] they're considered among the first shock cavalry, and yet I can't find anything about them using stirrups, so clearly mounted combat, including shock cavalry, must have been possible without them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_cavalry