[LT] Brigandine TL question

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

For example, there used to be a line of thoughtthat exploitation of Europe's wilderness depended on a more efficient horse collar, and heavy plows. However, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between heavy plows and the colonization of Europe, and horses were rarely used for plowing, so the horse collar doesn't matter: you use oxen.

I'd don't know so much about the exploitation of wilderness, but the horse collar did trigger something of a transportation revolution in Europe. A horse-drawn plow works faster and for longer than an ox-drawn one. This in turn changes horses from an economic net loss used only for military transportation and as transport and recreation of the wealthy, into an investment that ultimately pays off for yeoman and lower class farmers.

This changes horses from a luxury buy into a capital investment. So more people start raising, breeding, and selling horses. Horses then become more common, and their use expands outwards from the farms and camps.

By 1500 or so, only the very poor manors and farmsteads were still using oxen to any great extent. They'd largely been replaced by horses and then mules (which also use horse collars).