how tall??

[Aganzir]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I think it says somewhere (UT?) that the reason that old Gondor had little in the way of cavalry was due to the fact that few horses were substantial enough to carry a Numenorean.

Well, at least to me that sounds rather improbable... They would have to be really big so that it would cause a horse problems to carry them, and even if there were some 8 ft men I guess they could find them big enough horses (though it's a different matter if they should fight on horseback at all, then). But it looks rather normal if a 6 ft man is riding a 5 ft horse.

If you've seen paintings of medieval tournaments, the knights are often quite tall compared to their horses. Both men and horses were smaller back then, but the horses were relatively even smaller.
To my knowledge, light horses were preferred to big in the battles, though. But if the rider was really tall and stout the horse had to be big as well... Even nowadays there are still quite a lot horses over 17 hands.

Originally Posted by Mith

Of course it is possible that they had larger horses but it seems unlikely.

Is there any mention how tall the mearas were?