The Domestication of the Horse

[A] Few animals have reshaped human history as thoroughly as the horse. Archaeologists long assumed that horses were kept for meat and milk for centuries before anyone thought to climb onto one. [B] Evidence from the Eurasian steppe has complicated that assumption. Excavations at Botai, a settlement in northern Kazakhstan occupied some five thousand years ago, produced horse teeth marked by a distinctive pattern of wear on the second premolar, the sort of damage caused by a bit held in the mouth. [C] Pottery from the same site holds chemical traces of mare's milk, which indicates that the animals were also being kept in managed herds rather than simply hunted.

Riding did not merely make travel faster; it changed what travel was for. A herder on foot can move animals across perhaps fifteen kilometres of grassland in a day. A mounted herder can cover several times that distance and still be home by evening. [D] Pastures that had been too remote to be worth using became ordinary working ground, and settlements that had been effectively isolated from one another found themselves within easy reach. Horses were later harnessed to wheeled vehicles, but the decisive change had already taken place on the animal's back.