Somewhere I read that horses were first domesticated and ridden in war in Kazakhstan. Any truth to this? And if not, where did it happen as far as we can tell?
That’s what the wiki says.
We tend to have a narrow and rigid definition of “domestication” which does not conform to the way many animals drifted into congress with human beings through a process of millennia.
In Mongolia today, horse herds and nomadic tribes exist together in a way which is probably very ancient. The horses are “wild” in that little or no attempt is made to control breeding, which is one of the definitions of domestication. Nor are they fed, or contained in any way. When someone wants to ride, they catch a horse out of the herd, saddle it, and ride it, turning it back into the herd when they are done with it. I believe this is very similar to the manner the North American plains natives used horses, and the climates, too, are analogous.
Horses are extremely adaptable to climate, far more than most other species. All they need is grass.
I highly recommend the book by Wendy Williams, “The Horse, the epic history of our noble companion”. It is an exploration of the entire scientific record of the horse beginning with its earliest ancestors, up until the modern era, but it is most concerned with the paleontological record, and with the instances of modern wild-living horses – typically located in unwanted and inhospitable areas such as the American desert, small coastal islands, and marshlands. Excellent writer. (I learned about the above Mongolian horses from that book).
Another great read is more well-known “The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, how bronze-age riders from the Eurasian steppe shaped the modern world” by David W. Anthony.
Thanks for the suggestions!
You could just have easily asked where was the first dog was domesticated. Dogs were apparently domesticated by lots of people, in different places, a very long time ago. Like with horses, nobody could ever know who were the first people who did it.
From Wikipedia…
One of the most important transitions in human history was the domestication of animals, which began with the long-term association between wolves and hunter-gatherers more than 15,000 years ago. The dog was the first species and the only large species to have been domesticated. The archaeological record and genetic analysis show the remains of the Bonn-Oberkassel dog buried beside humans 14,200 years ago to be the first undisputed dog, with disputed remains occurring 36,000 years ago. The domestication of the dog predates agriculture and it was not until 11,000 years ago in the Holocene era that people living in the Near East entered into relationships with wild populations of boar, sheep, and goats. Where the first domestication of the dog took place remains debated; however, literature reviews of the evidence find that the dog was domesticated in Eurasia with the most plausible proposals being Central Asia, East Asia, and Western Europe. By the close of the most recent Ice Age 11,700 years ago, five ancestral lineages had diversified from each other.
General thought was that horses were centralized around the plains of the Ukraine. The first evidence of riding seems to be from the remains of horse teeth in that region showing "spalling’, that is bits of the teeth broken off trying to bite a bit in the mouth. IIRC from some article in Scientific American decades ago, that was estimated to be about 3500 to 4000 BC - which fits the timeline - horse riding then worked its way south to the mountains north of Mesopotamia, where it helped the northern barbarians overrun the civilized cities.
There’s suggestions that the Greek legends about centaurs - half man, half horse - were based on the locals’ first impressions of men riding horses. This would have been sometime before 1000BC. Recall there were chariots mentioned in the Trojan War. (Illiad).
The flat desert plains of Mesopotamia, the Middle East and Egypt were ideal for light, fast horse-drawn two-wheel war chariots (You can see an example in the goods from Tut’s tomb.) Flat terrain meant the chariots could be lighter, did not have as much jarring that might break them; on man drove, one man stood and fired arrows - so a difficult fast moving target that could outflank infantry. This was more convenient because before stirrups were in widespread use it was difficult for someone on horseback to maintain balance while swinging a sword or firing a bow.
Speculation is the horse was kept for food before people tried harnessing or riding them.
A major invention in the middle ages was the horse collar. Before that, hoses were not effective draft animals, because they keep their head up to watch for predators (unlike cows and oxen, which have their head down to fight predators and each other with horns.) A strap across the horse’s chest tended to restrict their breathing, unlike oxen. Horse collars seem obvious now, but they are padded collars that put the weight of the thing being pulled on the shoulder bones.
So - probably herded and coralled for meat, then for pulling light fast chariots and riding