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A 4,000-Year History of Humans and Horses
In
just 4000 years, horses have become so intertwined with human populations that,
they were the harbingers of our interconnected, globalized society.
Taylor,
W. 2024. Hoof beats: How horses shaped human history. University of California
Press.Sources:https://www.ucpress.edu/books/hoof-beats/hardcoverhttps://www.williamttaylor.com/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr0002https://www.ted.com/talks/william_t_taylor_how_horses_changed_history/transcript?subtitle=en&language=enHumans
have been fascinated by horses for a long time. The Chauvet Cave in France features
vivid and stunning animal paintings created 30,000 years ago, with horses being
the most frequently depicted animals. According to a database containing over
4,700 images of European Paleolithic artwork, horses appear most often,
accounting for about one-third of all animal images and frequently occupying a
central position.![]()
Source:
https://smarthistory.org/theme-religion/
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A
mounted horse messenger rides with his legs supported in cloth loops, depicted
on murals from the tombs at Jiayuguan, Gansu, ca. 220–316
CE, in the collections at Gansu Provincial Museum, Lanzhou.![]()
Traffic
light during summer festival season in downtown Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 2015How
did horses evolve from wild animals into large domesticated livestock that
humans could harness and ride, thereby transforming the development of human
civilization and the course of history? In his new book, Hoof Beats: How Horses
Shaped Human History, archaeologist William Taylor attempts to answer this
question based on the latest archaeology evidences.In
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond points out
that livestock have influenced the development of human societies in several
ways: providing meat, dairy products, fertilizer, hair, draft power (for
plowing, transportation, and warfare), and germs (for more details, see
CityReads | Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel). Among these, the role of horses
in transportation, communication, and warfare has been particularly
significant, profoundly impacting the development of human societies.Hoof
beats is structured in four “hoof beats”corresponding to four key stages in the relationship between humans and equids.
In beat 1, “Horses and People,” it explores the origin and evolutionary history of horses and
humanity’s oldest relationship with the horse as
predator and prey. In beat 2, “The Cart,” it traces the earliest emergence of domestication. It demonstrates
how horse domestication began with the innovation of the chariot, spreading
people and horses across much of Inner Asia. In beat 3, “The Rider,” it explores innovation in horse
control and how the emergence of mounted horseback riding transformed ancient
Eurasia and repositioned the steppes as the center of global cultures,
economies, and empires. Finally, in beat 4, “The World,”it explores the journey of the horse over the globe’s great oceans as they accompanied Viking explorers to the High
Arctic, sparked drastic social change across the Americas, and revolutionized
life in the colonies of Australasia. The book’s final
chapter wrestles with the rapid disappearance of horses from a postindustrial
world and outlines how these “hoofprints” continue to shape our lives and our future.The origin and domestication of horseGenomic
studies have shown that all modern equids originated from a single lineage
within the genus Equus, which evolved in North America around 4 million
years ago. Shortly thereafter, this lineage split into two branches: one branch
included the so-called caballine horses, which resemble modern domestic horses,
while the other branch included zebras, asses, and donkeys.During
the first ice age of the Pleistocene, which began about 2.5 million years ago,
ancient equids gradually dispersed across the Bering land bridge into Eurasia
and then into Africa, forming different species branches that eventually became
today's horses, donkeys, and zebras. By the late Pleistocene, horses, asses,
zebras, and their close relatives lived on every continent except Australia and
Antarctica.Horses
thrived in Eurasia and were domesticated there. However, in the Americas, where
horses originally evolved, they disappeared from the archaeological record
(went extinct) between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago, possibly due to climate
change, overhunting by humans, and competition with bison. Horses were not
reintroduced to the Americas until the 16th century by colonizing Europeans.Archaeological
records indicate that horses may have been among the first animals hunted by
humans, with evidence suggesting that at least 500,000 years ago, caballine horses
were a key part of the diet of human hunters.The
origin of horse domestication is a topic of much debate, with scholars arguing
over evidence such as tooth wear, the gender distribution of bones, and milk fat
residue as supporting or opposing evidence for the earliest domestication of
horses.Around
2000 BCE, people on the steppes of western Eurasia domesticated horses. By
then, people in western Asia had already domesticated many animals and begun
using some of them to pull carts. But, because horses were generally faster and
more difficult to control, steppe people developed a bridle-and-bit system and
chariots with lighter, spoked wheels. By the end of the last ice age, horses
had become deeply integrated into the lifestyles, economies, arts, and cultures
of the people of Eurasia.Horses
considerably sped up everything with which they interacted, and each modern
example had a precursor. For example, a horse-based postal system that
connected the Persian Gulf with societies based in what is now Türkiye
operated in the late 6th century BCE. The Pony Express in 1860 reduced the time
for a message to travel across the width of the United States to 10 days.In
just 4000 years, horses have become so intertwined with human populations that,
they were the harbingers of our interconnected, globalized society.Horses revolutionized warfare, transportation, and trade,
contributing to the rise and fall of empiresFrom
England to Egypt, from Siberia to South Asia, horses quickly spread across
three continents after their initial domestication. In the steppe regions,
horses facilitated mobility and nomadic lifestyles. The demand for horses and
chariots increased across the continent, fostering new connections between the
steppes and the agricultural civilizations of West Asia, and horses helped
globalize the steppe. As horses became key to power, the once-marginalized
steppe regions gained control over transportation and military strength. The
horse culture of the steppe expanded to its fringes and integrated with those
peripheral societies. Metallurgical products also began to spread across vast
regions of the continent, and domesticated crops once confined to a particular
corner of the continent, such as millet from East Asia and free-threshing wheat
from the Iranian Plateau, spread to the opposite ends of Eurasia. In this way,
by 2000 BCE, horses helped lay the foundation for a truly globalized world,
bringing people, goods, ideas, languages, and biota to areas previously
untouched. Charioteers overthrew dynasties and established new ones, with
horsemanship and mastery over horses as their foundation.In
East Asia, the initial spread of horses was primarily driven by pastoralists.
Due to the earlier adoption of horseback riding, horse culture rapidly emerged
in the harsh eastern steppes, giving rise to a mobile pastoral lifestyle that,
in turn, drove social change. The expanding East Asian pastoral zone brought
steppe peoples into contact with the fringes of Shang dynasty China, and horse
trade facilitated the formation of new social, economic, and political
connections. Initially, chariots and horses were rare, elite items, but soon
they became forces that reshaped the political landscape, overthrowing the
centuries-old Shang dynasty and leading to the rise of the Western Zhou.In
the steppes, horseback riding further exacerbated social inequality. By 1000
BCE, the emergence of wealthy elites was reflected in elite burial sites and
luxurious grave goods in many regions. However, the social impact of horseback
riding was also more complex. On the steppes, horseback riding was more
accessible than chariotry, requiring less specialized equipment. When shooting
arrows from horseback, women were as dangerous and effective on the battlefield
as men. According to the high frequency of female remains found in warrior
burials from this period, as well as other historical and archaeological
evidence, the early cavalry era seems to have provided many opportunities for
female warriors in Scythian and Saka societies.Innovations
in horseback riding also led to regular, close, and often unwelcome contact
between previously relatively isolated regions of the ancient world, marking
the earliest signs of true globalization across Eurasia. As steppe peoples
penetrated the settled fringes of the continent, they brought with them new
language groups and genes, new lifestyles, new ideas, and new technologies.
These new connections across steppes and deserts facilitated sustained travel
routes, diplomatic relations, and trade networks between emerging East Asian
dynasties and Western civilizations. At the core of these emerging networks lay
a new type of society that would have a profound impact on the course of human
history—the horse-riding peoples of Inner Asia.With
the advent of cavalry, the new transcontinental interactions sparked by horse
domestication and chariots turned from a slow trickle into a torrential flood.
Steppe horse cultures drove innovations in horse control and equipment,
reshaping the steppe horse into a taller, stronger, and more docile animal.
Horse warfare stripped authority and geopolitical power from the great
agricultural river valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, and the
Yellow River, transferring it to those living in cold tundras, high mountains,
dry steppes, and parched deserts. These areas, once seen as barriers, became
valuable zones for horse rearing and vibrant centers of trade and political
authority.Driven
by the advantages and innovations in horse equipment, horses helped situate
steppe polities as the first global superpowers. When large-scale climate
shifts disadvantaged agricultural societies in Europe and Asia, the same
changes often benefited the livestock economies of the steppes. At the height
of these grand empires, cosmopolitan centers emerged in the heart of Inner
Asia, supported by complex infrastructure like the Mongol Empire's postal relay
system. In the emerging globalized world, problems in one corner of the
continent could quickly become problems in another, and even the most extreme
geographical barriers could not long hold back the influence of horses.By
the mid-15th century, horses had become deeply embedded in societies from the
Pacific to the Atlantic. In the 16th century, horses were reintroduced to the
Americas by European colonists, and colonization and trade further dispersed
horses around the globe. By the end of the 19th century, horses had traversed
every mountain range from the Altai to the Andes and filled every prairie from
the Pontic steppe to the Pampas. When British explorers such as Robert Falcon
Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton landed in the frigid Antarctic during the
early 20th century, horses even set foot (albeit briefly; they were slaughtered
and eaten by the struggling explorers) on the icy landmasses near the southern
pole.From horses to horsepowerIn
1885, a German engineer invented the first gasoline-powered motorized car. At
this point, horses had served as a means of land transportation for humans for
nearly 6,000 years.One
of the first places that motor vehicles replaced domestic horses was in urban
environments. In the city, raising, feeding, and caring for a horse was an
expensive and tremendously messy hassle. Estimates suggest that in 1880, horses
in New York had a population of more than 150,000 that produced between three
and four million pounds of manure and four thousand gallons of urine every day.
In contrast, a motor vehicle did not have to be fed, watered, or stabled.
Upkeep was simpler, and travel was faster. Soon, day-to-day activities like
sending messages, traveling, and transporting goods became challenges that were
more easily solved without the horse.But
horses still figured prominently in combat operations during the war itself,
with European nations bringing hundreds of thousands of horses and mules to
serve in essential lines of communication and troop transport. Horse cavalry
even played a central role on the battlefield in decisive cavalry campaigns in
the eastern Mediterranean theater. However, postwar production sent automotive
production soaring, and soon, commercial motorized vehicles were easily
available in Europe, Australia, and the Americas, unseating the horse as the
primary means of transport in the Western world. Horse populations plummeted in
the United States from the tens of millions at the end of WWI down to the
single-digit millions.In
the steppes of Eurasia, horse numbers remained more stable. In Mongolia,
horse-based mail systems persisted well into the mid-20th century, and
important cavalry battles were fought on horseback as late as 1950.
Nonetheless, the 20th century brought the golden age of horse transport to a
dramatic close.
1."The
most direct contribution of plant and animal domestication to wars of conquest
was from Eurasia’s horses, whose military role made them the jeeps and Sherman tanks
of ancient warfare on that continent…they enabled Cortés
and Pizarro, leading only small bands of adventurers, to overthrow the Aztec
and Inca Empires. Even much earlier (around 4000 B.C.), at a time when horses
were still ridden bareback, they may have been the essential military
ingredient behind the westward expansion of speakers of Indo-European languages
from the Ukraine…When horses later were yoked to wagons and other vehicles,
horse-drawn battle chariots (invented around 1800 B.C.) proceeded to
revolutionize warfare in the Near East, the Mediterranean region, and China.Still
later, after the invention of saddles and stirrups, horses allowed the Huns and
successive waves of other peoples from the Asian steppes to terrorize the Roman
Empire and its successor states, culminating in the Mongol conquests of much of
Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries A.D. Only with the introduction
of trucks and tanks in World War I did horses finally become supplanted as the
main assault vehicle and means of fast transport in war. "- Jared Diamond, Guns,
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies![]()
2."Most
primates interpret a direct gaze as a threat; it is not so with chimpanzees.
David had taught me that so long as I looked into his eyes without arrogance,
without any request, he did not mind. And sometimes he gazed back at me as he
did that afternoon. His eyes seemed almost like windows through which, if only
I had the skill, I could look into his mind. How many times since that far-off
day I have wished that I could, even if just for a few short moments, look out
onto the world through the eyes, with the mind, of a chimpanzee. One such
minute would be worth a lifetime of research. For we are human-bound,
imprisoned within our human perspective, our human view of the world. Indeed,
it is even hard for us to see the world from the perspective of cultures other
than our own, or from the point of view of a member of the opposite sex."-Jane
Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
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