Pulled from a Field in Albania, a 2,500-Year-Old Statuette Comes to Getty | Hacker News Reader

Pulled from a Field in Albania, a 2,500-Year-Old Statuette Comes to Getty

getty.edu

45 pointsdrdee22 comments

One detail that I think is so cool is how people from this period rode horses without a saddle. I think it leads to very different capabilities as well as different horses than we have now. The riders have to scoot much further up, almost on the neck of the horse.

Growing up my farm-raised mom got the horsey bug for a bit and altho we only had a half acre and couldn't keep horses ourselves we rented a horse from a family in our church. An uncooperative moody unfriendly half-arabian half-something else mean jerk that we could only ride bareback for some reason. And so that's how I rode it all around. I guess I didn't know any better, but I got used to it.

Until the day it decided it had enough, bucked me off and turned and kicked me in the face (luckily it had no horseshoes). Then I made it clear that I was done with horses and 'Diablo' went home (where he never wanted to leave in the first place) and I never had to see him again.

Hope you enjoyed my pointless tangent.

How much damage did the kick in the face do?

A little bruising, no concussion. Parents took me to the hospital and had me looked over. He had no horseshoes and must have just grazed me.

The horse was just correcting you then (in its mind obviously). I've seen a horse correct a dog before with a kick and the dog was like whoah that sucked won't do that again. I've also heard stories of dogs harassing horses to the point where the horse is really pissed off, gives them the full double barrel, and at that point the only humane option is euthanizing the poor dog.

One of the newer John Wick movies showed what a pissed off horse can do in memorable style.

> One of the newer John Wick movies showed what a pissed off horse can do in memorable style.

Yep, that's quite a smack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5l3ncEcRKs

Love how all the horses are just standing around non-chalant while gunshots go off all over. Very realistic :-)

Either the sound was added later or those were exceptionally well trained animals. Probably both.

My brother did civil war reenactment and there was a lot of black powder exploding and they managed to train the horses to tolerate it. But it definitely took training!

All of it is added in post, they'd all be deaf after filming the first scene otherwise

That was a great tangent. Were you able to ride him at a gallop like that? How did you hold on? Were you seated closer to the neck or directly over the back?

I was 11 or 12, I don't remember much :-) Definitely could get him going at a reasonable pace. But I dunno. I'm sure there are horsey type people here who can talk about bareback riding, or youtube would help (tho ... other ... content might come up). I recall being taught to ride this way, but I also recall it had disadvantages.

About 35 years ago I was visiting my mum's uncle in the middle of nowhere India. His family had owned a village farm for time immemorial. There was a Ganesh statue at the side of a field. People walking to/from the field would touch it, leave something there, etc.

I asked why it was there (the village temple was elsewhere, by the road). He said that some years prior they'd encountered it in the field while digging so pulled it out, cleaned it up and put it there. Who knows how old it was...a hundred years? Hundreds of years? More? I certainly had no expertise to tell. But it still worked fine so was still "in use".

I imagine it's been stolen and/or sold off by now.

(Speaking of ancient relics: despite then-decades old land reform and civil rights, it seemed like the old feudal system still operated de facto. Sigh.)

> the archaeologists observed a local farmer plowing his field nearby. They figured it was worth paying close attention to, since stray finds are always a possibility. You never know what can be found near the top layers of soil. Sure enough, as the farmer plowed the field after the season’s onion harvest, the archaeologists witnessed the statuette coming up from no more than 15 inches below the surface.

Interesting how it went on and how the archeologists tracked the farmer for so long. I hope that the farmer was treated fairly.

Also, one thing that I heard when I was in Albania, is that the country has mostly paved over their cities, making excavation in these areas virtually impossible. If anyone from Albania is reading this I'd love to hear your pov. point of view.

What is a "pov. point of view."?

Look ma no hands!

I wonder why the sword is placed so high.

It almost looks like it would be a balancing pole -the sort tightrope walkers might use. As archaeologists and others are wont to do, I would surmise it was a training exercise to practice balance while riding without a saddle.

Why do they say it is Greek?

> Initial assessments based on the piece’s artistic techniques, how it was cast, its style, and its location in an area where ancient Greeks settled indicated that the object was Greek and dated from around 500 BCE.

Because it is from Albania ;)

Yes, go ahead and bring ethnic tensions into an HN comment section. This will end well.

After reading the story I'm left wondering if the statue came from random place but Getty folks needed a cover, and made up the story of a farmer plowing nearby. Not sure why?

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