Stirrup
In antiquity, the earliest foot supports consisted of riders placing their feet under a girth or using a simple toe loop appearing in India by the 2nd century BC.
As a tool allowing expanded use of horses in warfare, the stirrup is often called the third revolutionary step in equipment, after the chariot and the saddle.
Among other advantages, stirrups provided greater balance and support to the rider, which allowed the knight to use a sword more efficiently without falling, especially against infantry adversaries.
[11] This ancient foot support consisted of a looped rope for the big toe which was at the bottom of a saddle made of fibre or leather.
[12] Buddhist carvings in the temples of Sanchi, Mathura and the Bhaja caves dating back between the 1st and 2nd century BC feature horsemen riding with elaborate saddles with toes slipped under girths.
[15] A pair of first century BC double bent iron bars, approximately 17 cm in length with curvature at each end, excavated from a grave near Junapani in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, have been postulated as either full foot stirrups or bridle bits.
[22] Without a solid tree, the rider's weight in the stirrups creates abnormal pressure points that make the horse's back sore.
[23][full citation needed] Modern thermography studies on "treeless" and flexible-tree saddle designs have found that there is considerable friction across the center line of a horse's back.
[24] A coin of Quintus Labienus, who was in service of Parthia, minted circa 39 BC depicts on its reverse a saddled horse with hanging objects.
[27][full citation needed] One of the earliest solid-treed saddles in the west was first used by the Romans as early as the 1st century BC,[28] but this design did not have stirrups either.
Most of these early Northeast Asian stirrups were oval in shape and made from iron, sometimes solid and sometimes applied over a wooden core, and this form would remain in use for many centuries thereafter.
[33] These had a distinctive swanlike shape, curved up and backward at the front so as to bring the loop for the leather strap over the instep and achieve a correct balance.
[3] The iron pear-shaped form of stirrups, the ancestor of medieval European types, has been found in Europe in 7th century Avar graves in Hungary.
[35] A total of 111 specimens of early Avar-age, apple shaped, cast-iron stirrups with elongated suspension loop and flat, slightly inward bent tread had been excavated from 55 burial sites in Hungary and surrounding regions by 2005.
[36]: 316 The first European literary reference to the stirrup may be in the Strategikon, traditionally ascribed to the Roman emperor Maurice, and therefore written sometime between 575 and 628, but this is widely disputed, and others place the work in the eighth or ninth century.
[42] The second principal type in Northern Europe has, as its most characteristic feature, a pronounced rectangular suspension loop set in the same plane as the bow, as found amongst the Hungarian examples, and is predominantly centered in Denmark and England during the later 10th and 11th centuries.
[43] A variant of this type, called the north European stirrup, has been dated to the second half of the 10th century in Sweden, found at the boat-burial cemetery at Valsgärde.
[43] In Denmark from the 920s to the 980s, during the reign of the Jelling kings, many leading Danes were buried with military honors and equipped with stirrups, bits and spurs, in what are called cavalry-graves, found mostly in north Jutland.
[44] Into England, it is argued, stirrups were not introduced by the Scandinavian settlers of the 9th century but are more likely related to later Viking raids led by Cnut the Great and others during the reign of King Aethelred (978–1013).
[45] In what today is France, Charles Martel distributed seized lands to his retainers on condition that they serve him by fighting in the new manner, which some attribute to his recognizing the military potentialities of the stirrup.
The requirements of the new mode of warfare which it made possible found expression in a new form of western European society dominated by an aristocracy of warriors endowed with land so that they might fight in a new and highly specialized way.
"[48] Other scholars dispute this assertion, suggesting that stirrups may provide little advantage in shock warfare, but are useful primarily in allowing a rider to lean farther to the left and right on the saddle while fighting, and simply reduce the risk of falling off.
If a saddle is made without a solid tree, without careful engineering, the rider's weight in the stirrups and leathers can create pressure points on the horse's back and lead to soreness.
There are many variations on the standard stirrup design, most claiming either to be safer in the event of a fall or to make it easier for a rider to maintain a proper foot and leg position.
