The Origin Of Stirrups

According to physical archaeological findings, stirrups appeared in China in the Western Han Dynasty at the latest, which can be seen in the Western Han Dynasty murals.
In the 3rd century before there were mature stirrups, due to the invention and promotion of saddles, there were a large number of records of knight warfare, such as thousands of records of horse warfare in the late Western Zhou Dynasty. In the 4th century BC, Six Towers, a military book on knight warfare in the Warring States War, contained a large number of training and selection methods for cavalry, such as requiring knights to "avoid dust and cross gullies" and "attack the enemy's dangers". It can be seen that the selection and training of Chinese cavalry at that time was very strict, and almost the same time in the Middle East, it is also the world of heavy cavalry, all of them were cavalry riders without stirrups. It can be seen that in the era without stirrups, knights can only be more intensive training to make up for it; In addition, such as the army of Alexander in Southern Europe, the famous partner cavalry is the assault of Alexander's army to break the enemy; The knights of the North Asian nomads were trained from a young age, and with the invention of the high bridge saddle, they had stronger mobility and riding skills than civilized peoples.
In the era without the invention of stirrups, knights fought on the saddle of horses with bows and arrows and annexed spears and swords and shields, and the training of knights in that era was stricter than the training of cavalry in the Middle Ages, so the selection requirements were better.
Northern Wei Pottery horse: Although it is not very beautiful, it is an important cultural relic in the history of the invention and use of stirrups in China. This terracotta horse of Northern Wei Dynasty was unearthed in 1977 in a middle Northern Wei Dynasty tomb in University Road, Hohhot, about the early 5th century AD, with a pair of stirrups painted on the abdomen of the terracotta horse, which is the physical witness of the stirrups used in the Northern Wei Dynasty built by Tuoba Xianbei people, showing that China had mature iron stirrups in AD 400.
Stirrups are an epoch-making invention in human history. As the British historian of science and technology White pointed out: "Few inventions are as simple as the stirrup, and few inventions are of such great historical significance." The stirrups apply the force of the animal to the hand-to-hand combat, and unite the cavalry with the horse."
Indeed, after the invention of stirrups, it made the war horse easier to control, connected the man and the horse as one, freed the hands of the man riding on the horse, and the cavalry could ride and shoot on the galloping battle horse, and could also swing left and right on the horse to complete the military action of splitting left and right.
Original material
Stirrups are also called "Chinese boots" by the Western horse culture research community, stirrups include two important components, one is the part of the rider's foot, that is, the stirrup ring; The second is the stirrup shank or stirrup through which the stirrup is suspended on both sides of the saddle. Archaeological findings show that the steppe area of northeast China may have begun to appear in stirrups during the Sixteen Kingdoms period from the middle of the third century to the beginning of the fourth century. These stirrups are hanging stirrups with long straight handle covered with copper leather with wood core. Later, this stirrup spread eastward through Goguryeo, spreading to the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and then there was the widespread spread of narrow-pedal metal stirrups on the Eurasian steppe. Stirrups also appeared in southern China around the 4th century. In short, wood core long straight handle stirrups are the source of all kinds of stirrups in the East and West. The earliest stirrup object was found in the middle of the 3rd century to the beginning of the 4th century in the Xianbei people's activities in northeast China, unearthed in the west of Liaoning Province and the Inner Mongolia Chifeng Beipiao county. In 1965, archaeologists unearthed a pair of wooden core long straight handle covered with copper stirrups in the tomb of Feng Sufu, a nobleman in Beipiao County. This pair of stirrups is 24.5 cm long and 16.8 cm wide, which is the earliest stirrups in the existing era in the world.