The Domestication of the Horse

The relationship between people and horses is one of the most significant partnerships in human history. For thousands of years the horse provided a speed and strength that no human could match, transforming the way people travelled, farmed, traded and fought. Yet horses were not always the willing companions of humankind. Long before they were ridden or harnessed, wild horses roamed the grasslands, and the process by which some of them came to live and work alongside people was slow, uncertain and is still not fully understood. Piecing it together is one of the intriguing challenges of studying the distant past.

Wild horses once ranged widely across the open grasslands of Europe and Asia, where herds grazed on the plains. For early human communities these animals were at first simply a source of food, hunted like other wild game for their meat. There is little to suggest that people originally saw them as anything more. The idea of keeping horses, breeding them and eventually riding them seems to have developed only gradually, and probably in the grassland regions where horses were most abundant and where people were already familiar with their habits from generations of hunting.

Domesticating a large, powerful and easily frightened animal was no simple matter. Unlike some creatures that seem to settle readily into life alongside people, horses are naturally wary and quick to flee from danger, and taming them required patience and skill. The first step was probably to keep horses in captivity for their meat and perhaps their milk, managing herds rather than hunting them in the wild. Only later, as people grew more familiar with handling the animals, is it likely that some individuals were trained to be led, to pull loads and finally to be ridden. Each of these stages represented a considerable advance in the relationship between the two species.

Working out when and where all this happened is difficult, because the evidence is scattered and often hard to interpret. Bones alone do not easily reveal whether an animal was wild or tame, so archaeologists must look for subtler clues. One kind of evidence comes from the teeth of ancient horses. When a horse is controlled by a rider using a bit, a device placed in its mouth, the bit can leave distinctive marks of wear on certain teeth. The discovery of such wear on horse teeth from a particular period offers a hint that the animals were being ridden or driven, not merely hunted. Other clues come from changes in the size and build of horses over time, and from the ways in which their remains are found alongside human settlements.

Whenever it began, the mastering of the horse had consequences that are hard to overstate. A person on horseback could travel far faster and farther than one on foot, covering in a day distances that would otherwise take much longer. This new mobility reshaped how people lived. Herders could manage larger flocks across wider areas; goods and ideas could be carried more quickly between distant communities; and groups that possessed horses gained great advantages over those that did not. In time the horse became central to transport, agriculture and warfare across much of the world, and its influence spread as the knowledge of how to keep and use it passed from one people to another.

The horse also changed the scale on which human societies could operate. With horses, people could hold together larger territories, maintain contact across greater distances and move themselves and their possessions with a freedom that had not existed before. Some historians argue that the spread of certain languages and cultures across vast regions was made possible in part by the mobility that horses provided. Whether or not every such claim is correct, there is no doubt that the horse widened the horizons of the communities that adopted it, linking places that had once been effectively cut off from one another.

For most of recorded history, right up until the coming of the railway and the motor engine, the horse remained the fastest and most dependable means of travelling overland. Only in relatively recent times have machines finally overtaken it, ending a partnership that had lasted for thousands of years. Yet the marks of that long association remain all around us, in the layout of old roads, in countless words and expressions, and in the enduring affection many people still feel for an animal that, for so long, carried human ambitions across the surface of the Earth.