# How would the world be different today if horses never existed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 6, 2002, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595 "2002-08-06T12:52:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2002, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/41 "2002-08-09T20:42:47Z")
Elephants are _faster than horses_? I find that a little surprising, given that they can’t run or gallop, but simply _walk fast_. I bet they aren’t as manoeuvreable as horses though! My money is still on the Moose Regiments, with the War Camels coming up second. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2002, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/42 "2002-08-09T20:57:00Z")
If you want a ‘radical’ view, what if people had, in general, decided that animals were better as food and draft animals than riding animals, instead of finding a replacement for the nonexistant horse? Would infantry mobility have been a big factor? Larger groups of light infantry (such as the Roman velites, if my memory serves me correctly)? Or just, like one poster said, a heavier focus on power over mobility? ---
**Author:** ![Doubting\_Robert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e495f1/32.png) [@Doubting\_Robert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubting_Robert)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2002, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/43 "2002-08-09T21:06:45Z")
According to the military history course I took [sub]about thirty-five years ago[/sub] (part of Army ROTC), Hannibal’s elephants were ineffective against Roman legions. The legionnaires stood (or knelt) with their spears at ready. The elephants, upon reaching a wall of painful spearpoints, turned and ran, trampling the Carthaginian infantry behind them. I suspect the big problem with the use of war elephants is their intelligence. They are smart enough to get themselves out of danger, no matter what the rider wants them to do. ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2002, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/44 "2002-08-09T22:11:45Z")
I suspect that this is just not answerable. To many variables and such. However, I believe in the aforementioned Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond mentions that horses are unusually suited to domestication (along with dogs). In other words, there are actually relatively few species that can truly be domesticated as opposed to just tamed. For example, the problem of domesticating Zebras, apparently this is difficult or impossible. Now I am really only repeating what I read in Guns, Germs, and Steel{/u], but this actually seems plausible to me. If this is true then it seems that the other animal substitutes might never become as docile and useful as the horse. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/45 "2002-08-10T02:17:37Z")
There’d be a hell of a lot less horseshit around at least :mad: 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Crowzone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/46a35a/32.png) [@Crowzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowzone)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/46 "2002-08-10T03:24:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BobT \* > \*\*Johnny Fontaine wouldn’t have gotten the part in the movie. \*\* Hahaha Classic! (I hope everyone gets this one) ---
**Author:** ![Barnabas\_Truman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/848f3c/32.png) [@Barnabas\_Truman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barnabas_Truman)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/47 "2002-08-10T05:32:52Z")
The Orcs were able to function just fine as a raider tribe using large wolves instead of horses. 😃 And while we’re on the subject of alternate domestication histories… what if some tribe back in the olden days had domesticated the mammoth before it went extinct? (And, of course, somehow managed to prevent their mammoths from dying off?) Could make for an interesting war beastie… -=-Barnabas ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/48 "2002-08-10T05:39:03Z")
Catherine the Great’s reputation would be vastly different. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/49 "2002-08-10T18:40:21Z")
There’s be fewer people called Smith. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/50 "2002-08-10T20:06:05Z")
No “Black Death.” No cowboys. Probably no large scale cattle farming of any type. ## Tris “In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world, Beats a '52 Vincent, and a red headed girl.” ~ Richard Thompson ~ ---
**Author:** ![jiHymas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@jiHymas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jiHymas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/51 "2002-08-10T22:20:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Triskadecamus \* > **No "Black Death."** Why not? ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2002, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/52 "2002-08-10T23:19:53Z")
The Black Death was most likely originally the result of zoonotic infectoin from horses. It was almost certainly spread to a wide extent by Mongol horsemen, during the historic plagues. No horses, no pandemic, and probably no Black Death at all. That doesn’t mean no plagues. Just different ones. ## Tris “In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world, Beats a '52 Vincent, and a red headed girl.” ~ Richard Thompson ~ ---
**Author:** ![Eran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Eran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eran)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2002, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/53 "2002-08-11T00:02:01Z")
Diamond’s Law: In any thread about civilization or human history, the probability of someone mentioning _Guns, Germs and Steel_ approaches 1 as the thread increases in length. Great book, by the way. ---
**Author:** ![jiHymas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@jiHymas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jiHymas)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2002, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/54 "2002-08-11T01:09:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Triskadecamus \* > **The Black Death was most likely originally the result of zoonotic infectoin from horses.** These explanations are more familiar to me: > [@](#): > > [http://orb.rhodes.edu/textbooks/westciv/blackdeath.html](http://orb.rhodes.edu/textbooks/westciv/blackdeath.html) > **The Black Death erupted in the Gobi Desert in the late 1320s. No one really knows why. The plague bacillus was alive and active long before that; indeed Europe itself had suffered an epidemic in the 6th century. But the disease had lain relatively dormant in the succeeding centuries. We know that the climate of Earth began to cool in the 14th century, and perhaps this so-called little Ice Age had something to do with it. > … > What was this disease? Bubonic plague is the medical term. It is a bacillus, an organism, most usually carried by rodents. Fleas infest the animal (rats, but other rodents as well), and these fleas move freely over to human hosts.** > [@](#): > > [http://alumni.cc.gettysburg.edu/~s330558/blackgeo.html](http://alumni.cc.gettysburg.edu/~s330558/blackgeo.html) > \*\*There are peculiar environmental conditions that determine the presence and virulence of plague epidemics. First, there are factors of insect and rodent ecology. It is carried on a flea, Y. pestis that enters the digestive system of a human. This flea routinely lives on rats, then moving to other host populations such as dogs, horses, and ultimately humans. \*\* > [@](#): > > [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society\_culture/welfare/blackdeath/blackdisease\_7.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/welfare/blackdeath/blackdisease_7.shtml) > **The plague bacteria is thought to have spread from the arid plains of central Asia. The plague generally left untouched the indigenous nomad population, because rat fleas do not like the smell of horses, with which the nomads lived in close proximity. However, from the mid-thirteenth century, increased commercialisation in Europe opened up silk routes through the steppelands, and the trading posts set up to service this trade formed convenient stepping-stones for infected fleas to break out of the area.** Do you have a cite? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2002, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/55 "2002-08-11T21:45:56Z")
> [@](#): > > We would use elephants instead. Intelligent, large and with a trunk. As long as we’re all citing Diamond, he wrote that the main disincentive to domesticating elephants is their growth rate; it apparently takes 15 years to raise an elephant from birth to adulthood. For this reason, most human owned elephants are not domesticated; they’re wild elephants that have been captured and tamed (thereby saving the owner from the “start-up investment”). It’s difficult to suppose that horses’ pervasive role in human society could be replaced by animals that depend on a wild population for replenishment, although I suppose it’s arguable that if horses or other animals didn’t exist to fill this role, the cost of raising elephants as domestic animals might be acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![G.Cornelius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@G.Cornelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.Cornelius)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2002, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/56 "2002-08-12T16:25:17Z")
Horses made a huge difference to agriculture. A farmer with a horse was much more productive than farmer without one. Perhaps it was this difference that released the resources that allowed european countires to aquire expansive emipres just after the medieval period, later to have factories and industrial revolutions. I am not sure how europe compares with other countries. I guess that where rice and maize are grown, most of the work is done by people. Of course, there are large areas of China where wheat is grown - did they use draft animals for farming? If it was not for horses, the americas may not have been worth colonising. A farmer without a horse is little better off than a subsistance farmer - he will always be poor and might as well have stayed at home. A farmer with a horse, and a bit of luck, can look forward to a bumper harvest and good profit. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2002, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/57 "2002-08-14T12:36:49Z")
The Mongol hordes never would have exploded out from the Mongolian grasslands to take over much of the world. The ripple on effects of those they displaced who then went on to displace others had a massive historical effect. G. Cornelius, in China they have traditionally used water buffalo as the beast of burden. AFAIK, horses were never used as farm animals. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2002, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/58 "2002-08-14T15:23:37Z")
> [@](#): > > A farmer with a horse was much more productive than farmer without one. True, but is a farmer with a horse more productive than a farmer with a team of oxen? Any reason that oxen couldn’t be substituted for horses/mules for agricultural purposes? They can plow. They can pull carts. (Thinking out loud:) The main drawback I can think of is that oxen aren’t as smart as mules (in my experience), which might make them more difficult to work with. For example, a mule can be trained to make turns at the appropriate moments while plowing. It can learn the “gee” and “haw” commands. Can oxen master those commands? ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2002, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/59 "2002-08-14T15:48:12Z")
**JiHymas,** Evidently my information is outdated. I am unable to find a cite, and have, in fact found several mentions of the unsuitability of horses as vectors. At one time, it was a fairly common belief that the Mongol invasions were principal causes of the rapid spread of plague, but that seems not to be the case, even considering the non horse vectors affected by the Mongols. ## Tris Fighting your own ignorance is no where near as much fun as fighting someone else’s. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2002, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595/60 "2002-08-14T15:56:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Little Nemo \* > \*\* > > As long as we’re all citing Diamond, he wrote that the main disincentive to domesticating elephants is their growth rate; it apparently takes 15 years to raise an elephant from birth to adulthood. For this reason, most human owned elephants are not domesticated; they’re wild elephants that have been captured and tamed (thereby saving the owner from the “start-up investment”). It’s difficult to suppose that horses’ pervasive role in human society could be replaced by animals that depend on a wild population for replenishment, although I suppose it’s arguable that if horses or other animals didn’t exist to fill this role, the cost of raising elephants as domestic animals might be acceptable. \*\* That’s why camels seem attractive (as a replacement beast of burden, not as an object of aesthetic appreciation). They have, in fact, been truly domesticated (wild bactrian camels are now quite rare, and listed as endangered - wild dromedaries are nonexistant - Australia has a large feral camel population). In the absence of horses, domestic stocks of camels might have found wider use. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-world-be-different-today-if-horses-never-existed/122595.md?page=4)