Horse as main course (by Luke Meinzen)

 

(Meat Vendor in Mongolia.  Photo (c)Leigh Wells)

After reading about the photographs of Mongolia on view at  Tibet House last month, Luke Meinzen sent along this piece about an experience he had during his tenure as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia:

As a child, the closest I got to horses was a coin-operated mustang in the grocery store. I was mostly indifferent to them, boyhood cowboy phase excepted, until a history professor described the Mongol armies that dominated Asia. Horsemen with a string of mounts pressed at unprecedented speed across impossible territory. They struck quickly, baiting opposing armies into outrunning their own supply lines and their discipline. When the Mongols moved separate from their own herds, they rotated horses to keep them fresh, opened veins to drink horse blood, and culled the weakest for food.

Continue reading here. 

Thanks, Luke.

-- sdh