The Horse: No Animal Has Done More

No animal has done more for the advancement of humankind than
the horse. That said, it’s hard to imagine ever using the horse
as a source of food. But of course, that’s how the man-horse
relationship began.

The history books contain many references to the horse as prey
some 50,000 years ago, when Cro-Magnon man had to hunt for his
food. Seems that no one knows for sure just when or how the
horse first became a helper to man. But many have reasoned that
when early Cro-Magnon man needed to move his encampments from
place to place, he started using the more docile horses as pack
animals. So that would mark the beginnings of horse
domestication.

Historians also believe that as man progressed from hunter to
farmer, he continued using horses for food but also as helpers
for herding. This would have brought about the need to jump on
the horse’s back and follow along behind the herd. And that
would mark the beginnings of the horse as a means of
transportation for humans.

Recent archeological excavations in the Ukraine unearthed
horses’ teeth and evidence of the first “bridle.” These findings
have brought the experts to conclude that the beginnings of
horseback riding began with the nomadic tribes of what is now
Eastern Europe, in about 4000 BC. However, riding wouldn’t
really catch on until long after the invention of the wheel and
the preferred use of horses as draft animals.

It is believed that the horse’s domestication as a draft animal
began sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC. Faster than the oxen
and equids that had first been used to pull wheeled vehicles,
the horse soon took over and this spawned the ever-improving
development of yokes, breast straps, collars, bits and bridles.

Inevitably the horse was to become a major tool of warfare.
Around 1350 BC the Hittite king Suppililiuma decided to go to
war against the Mitannians, bought large numbers of horses, and
engaged the services of a Mitannian horsemaster named Kikkuli.
After defecting from the Mitanni, Kikkuli turned the king’s
horses into war machines that were ridden into battle until the
king’s militia had totally destroyed the Mitanni.

Now the bonding of man and horse had truly begun. Still,
horseback riding was not for the elite, much less the general
populace. For hundreds of years, horses were bred to be
warhorses. But when Xenophon wrote “The Art of Horsemanship” in
around 400 BC, the time was approaching when people would ride
horses for more than herding, hunting and fighting.

Although America’s wild horses had been tamed by the Indians, it
is said that the Spanish explorers brought the first
domesticated horses to North America in 1519 AD.

By the early 1700s, Rhode Island had become America’s principal
horse breeding state. Horses became the primary means of
transportation, soon carrying riders on their backs and pulling
people and materials in wheeled vehicles across the vastness of
the New World.

By the 1800s the horse was a necessity of urban and rural life.
The horse helped us build cities, farm the land, fight wars and
settle a continent. No animal has done more for humankind.