Why were ancient American horses not domesticated for transportation purposes?

Hi,
Why were ancient American horses simply hunted and not used as draught animals by ancient American indigenous peoples? Were these animals not suited to domestication? Had the idea of domesticating animals not occur to them yet? The people populating North America at the time would have been hunter-gatherers 11000 years ago after all. Horse domestication in the Caucasus or on the steppes of Asia would have occurred 6-8000 years ago after the invention of the wheel.

I look forward to your feedback.

Nm

So there was domestication of a species of Equus in North America 5000 years ago.
"Approximately 5,000 years ago, wild caballines were captured at numerous locations in this vast geographic area and domesticated by diverse peoples, as the knowledge and technology for capturing, taming and riding horses spread "

http://www.ecology.info/horses-2.htm
Domestication of Caballine Horses

When horses became extinct in the New World, some species of Equus still survived in the Old World (e.g. zebras, wild asses and caballines). Their ancestors had dispersed there years earlier via the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Alaska to Siberia during periods when sea levels were lower. Many of these horse species are still extant, however most surviving species are now endangered. They were summarized at the beginning of this review.

Throughout the Holocene, wild caballine horses continued to range across the grasslands of Europe and Asia. Approximately 5,000 years ago, wild caballines were captured at numerous locations in this vast geographic area and domesticated by diverse peoples, as the knowledge and technology for capturing, taming and riding horses spread (Vilà et al. 2001; Bendrey 2012).

This saysthey died out 11000 to 13000 years ago and were only reintroduced with the Spanish coming to the Americas.

They were not domesticated because they did not exist in the Americas from 11,000 years ago until recently (historically).

I was hoping others would comment because I really don’t know the answer. But my guess would be (1)no history/habit of domestication of animals (2) don’t you need to live in settled towns to domesticate animals?

Probably mostly this. There is some debate about why the horse went extinct, but assuming it was human-mediated you have to remember that horses weren’t domesticated anywhere until thousands of years after they went extinct in the Americas. The very earliest domestication of the horse may have been on the Russian/Central Asian steppe 5,000-6,000 years ago. At the latest, at least by ~4,000 years ago.

No, they were probably much closer to each other in time. In fact they may even have been roughly contemporaneous if not necessarily in the same spot. As above both in the very general vicinity of 3,500 B.C., give or take several hundred years.

No, you misread. That article says they were domesticated in the Old World 5,000 years ago. It mentions claims that horses survived into later periods co-existing with Amerindian populations, but notes they are mostly dismissed for lack of evidence.

I think dogs were domesticated easier than cattle, horses, goats, and similar animals because dogs would follow humans and scavenge food whereas in other situations that was not true, the animals did not follow humans. In other words, to domesticate (most) animals, you need to be in a permanent settled location, do you not?

to domesticate (most) animals, you need to be in a permanent settled location, do you not?

Why would you say that? Horses are heard animals and home is where the heard is. The Mongolian nomadic people have no problem domesticating horses on the fly.

Plus to what degree is the modern “wild” horse a product of human selection? If wild horses 10,000 years ago were more like Zebras today good luck domesticating them.

Can zebras be domesticated?

Yes, I’ve herd that’s true.

I would of assumed it was the domestication of horses that gave them ability to be nomads. Like, at one point they were settled… then domesticated horses, then became nomads. Once you learn the skill/habit of domesticating horses, then you can domesticate horses “in the wild”.

I could be wrong about this of course.

Yes I did misread it. Thanks for pointing that out.

More to the point, it’s possible that the first arriving Amerinds found woolly mammoths, horses, and other megafauna which would soon go extinct. But this was thousands of years before any humans anywhere were domesticating anything.

Which is kind of begging the question. *Why *did horses become extinct in the Americas thousands of years before they were domesticated elsewhere?

The most widely accepted explanation is that Eurafrican horses co-evolved with hominids, and had adapted to being hunted by bipeds with spears since the times when those bipeds weren’t very good hunters. American horses were faced with a sudden onslaught of the perfected predator, which could now not only make spears, but could talk, use fire, work co-operatively, exploit a huge range of foods and so forth. The American horses couldn’t evolve fast enough to cope with the threat.

Of course, once they were extinct, they couldn’t be domesticated.

According to this website domestication in Eurasia occurred 5000-4, 500 BCE

http://global.britannica.com/topic/Tracing-the-History-of-Horse-Evolution-and-Domestication-1900351/images-videos/Tracing-the-History-of-Horse-Evolution-and-Domestication/178323

There is also the fact that actual horsemanship was hindered by the lack of stirrups. Those features seem completely obvious today because it is difficult to mount or control a horse without stirrups yet they simply didn’t exist in the vast majority of antiquity. The Roman empire relied heavily on horses yet they did they did not even have modern saddles to support them.

I can’t fully explain it except for the fact that human progress is not always linear. Abraham Lincoln died before door knobs were a widespread invention and the widespread adoption of belt-loops came after the invention of the airplane in 1903. Likewise, people in pre-modern times seemed to have missed some obvious innovations that would have helped them get more use out of their horses but they didn’t for seemingly no reason at all.

As to the question in the OP, containing let alone domesticating any horses is difficult even today. They are prey animals and take a lot of work, time (and money in today’s terms) to get used to human contact. There is a reason why horse ownership is mainly a rich person’s game today. They aren’t dogs and they cost a whole lot more than they are worth unless it is very specific and controlled circumstances.

I should add that ancient American indigenous people had many other baffling gaps in their knowledge. They built large-scale engineering projects that rival or beat most projects in the world today yet they never discovered the utility of wheels and axles outside of a few toys. That should have been obvious in hindsight but somehow it got missed. Jared Diamond’s book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ is excellent and covers this general subject very well. The only ways that I disagree with him are that he views the general environment as pre-destiny while I truly believe that some of it can be explained just by dumb luck or a fluke that became established in New World cultures through pure chance and tradition.

No, and no.

The people who crossed over into North America had domestic dogs with them, so they had a history of at least one domesticated species and no, you don’t need to be in a settled town to domestic animals, as numerous nomadic groups have demonstrated.

The general thought is that humans arrived in the new world around 10,000 to 12,000 BC and many large animals went extinct shortly after - for reasons Blake mentions. There are disagreements about a number of aspects of that process - some claim humans arrived 10,000 years earlier or more; it seems the linked article, the author claims that horses survived in North America much longer. But, it’s not a given that this is true.

I’m not an expert by any means, but what I understand is - horses have a peculiar ecological niche. They eat grass, but since they are not ruminants, they don’t get as much out of that food and need to eat a lot of grass, plus, as a bonus, the seeds and other extras included in their foraging. Their predator defence is “run away, run away!”.Hence they need particular lush flat grasslands as their habitat, would not be widespread beyond central USA. I’m guessing viable populations (after initial hunter predation) would be found at only a few sites.

Then there’s the question of need. Most human behaviour like agriculture and domestication is in response to need as well as happy circumstance. The initial invaders were very basic nomads, probably did not have a lot of baggage but needed food; whereas by 5,000BC in Ukraine, probably the accumulated “stuff” nomads took with them (thanks to barter from civilizations?) was starting to become more than their women could carry.

Then there’s the leap needed, vs. being thrown. Horse lore describes the effort needed to “break in” a horse. Or, consider harnesses - to contain a wild horse, you need a decent supply of pretty good rope, or corrals; etc. There’s a lot of steps from “nice dinner” to “hi-ho, Silver!” Nomads hauling and pitching large tents like yurts maybe would have gotten into rope-making technology, but would it have occurred (or filled a need?) in non-maritime Indians? (did the Aisian nomads learn rope-making from maritime sailor civilizations?)