8 days of happiness

[essayel]

Yeah I forgot yesterday, but then yesterday was the type of day where I'd have put something like "I'm happy today because the dog wasn't sick on my shoes". yesterday was just - *snarl*.

But today - I saw this on vashtan's journal and it made me very happy because the song is called Atay, and my story about him [4th C BC Scythian warlord who told Phillip of Macedonia where to stick his phalanxes] is coming along fairly well, though I'm getting frustrated with things like not being able to find out the exact dimensions of the wagon they used to live in, and whether they had musical instruments and whether they WERE as tall as they appear to be from some of the pictorial evidence or is is just artistic exaggeration.

Still the video is fun, if 1500 years too late, and displays the level of ferocity I'm going to have to write a few times *practices grrrring*. It'll make a nice change from schmoop.

Comments

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

Your story sounds better and better - good luck with the research! :)

and whether they WERE as tall as they appear to be from some of the pictorial evidence or is is just artistic exaggeration.

According to the archeologist who did the guided tour through the Scythian exhibition in Hamburg, the human remains they found (both mummies and skeletons) prove they were, i.e., about as tall on average as modern day people, which would have been quite a bit taller than other populations in antiquity. He said it was a question of nutrition (nomad people would have had the chance to grow up with a diet particularly rich in protein which was not the case for farming-based societies of the same historical period). He claimed if a Scythian in modern-day clothes were standing among us, we probably wouldn't notice.
I do not know if the catalogue gave exact data for the human remains they had on display there (I can try to look it up, for the warrior mummy they showed was definitely from about the right time period for you, only from the wrong location, i.e., Siberia, not Ukraine).

No idea about the exact dimensions of the wagons (as far as I remember, there is an existing wagon you can see pictures of on the homepage of the Hermitage Museum, but I believe it is just a funeral wagon, not one for everyday use, and I have no idea if it is from the right time period and region for your tale).

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

P.S.: Here you are. (http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/03/hm3_2_7e.html)

As for the height, I must disappoint you, as the only measurements that I can find right now are for some of the burials of the Arzhan 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzhan) kurgan (7th century BC); this book (http://www.amazon.de/Zeichen-goldenen-Greifen-Wilfried-Menghin/dp/3791338552/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241541564&sr=8-1) (p. 86 ff.) gives the heights of two men as about 170 and 171 cm and that of two women as 161 and 162 cm. Apparently, no heights are given for the bodies of the 4th and 3rd century Pazyryk burials, but I do remember that the aforementioned archeologist claimed the woman whose closing we saw in the exhibition had been "almost 2 meters tall".

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

4th C BC Scythian warlord who told Phillip of Macedonia where to stick his phalanxes]

My team at work now knows for sure I'm a maniac. That was the giggle. Fabulous. Very funny, and I want to read the story, and YES ULYTAU FOR EVERYBODY!

[britalone.livejournal.com]

Love the video, is a clip from a film? And the music is great. So you're writing about Scythia and Macedonia? Crumbs, I haven't encountered them since school way back when!!