Horses have evolved with humankind for thousands of years. They have carried us across vast distances, traversing landscapes and opening new frontiers. They have served as our beasts of burden, enabling cultures to spread and civilisations to grow. Horse domestication led to a discovery of a new transportation method that forever changed the evolutionary path of our species, and has made a lasting impact in nearly every aspect of the world as we know it today. Without horses, our lives and societies would most likely look very different from what we now take as granted.
The origin and dispersal of domesticated horses across Eurasia has long been an interest of archaeologists, historians and sociologists alike. When and where did horses first become domesticated, and how and why did they spread so widely so rapidly? How did their domestication impact the development of human societies? What was the importance of horses in human conflict and warfare? What if horses were never domesticated?
In the forthcoming chapters, we will focus on the monumental impact of horse domestication on human history, and how the early taming of horses allowed people to travel farther and faster than ever before, profoundly altering nearly every facet of human civilization. Horses granted improved mobility, enabling greater trade, exploration, cultural diffusion, military power and conquests, and migrations of peoples across the world.
We also trace the origins and historical role of horses across cultures. We discuss the importance of technological advances in horsemanship and horse-related technology that enhanced the benefits of horseback riding. We observe the historical role of horses from ancient tribes to modern populations, and how different civilizations incorporated horses into migration, warfare, labor, culture and daily life. Famous horse-riding warriors and legendary horsewomen are also discussed. Historical sayings and maxims related to horses will be presented for broader cultural contexts and philosophical insights. We will also speculate on what our world would look like if horses were not domesticated the way they were, when they were.
Altogether, this story highlights the transformative impact of horse domestication on mobility - how it empowered, for the first time, human migrations, conquerors and empires, transformed trade and transportation, and shaped the global spread of people, technology and ideas across the globe for millennia. The reverberations of horse domestication ultimately reshaped human history in profound ways.
In these chapters, readers and listeners are invited to embark on a thought-provoking experiment, and to reflect on the profound implications of horses and their domestication for human evolution. Afterall, a key question we would do well to ask ourselves is: How would our world look like today, if the horses were never domesticated, when they were, where they were?
HORSE POWER | E01 | Introduction