‘Horse and human’ represent a fascinating interspecies relationship between predator and its prey. This unique relationship shaped our history, with the horse being one of the most significant suppliers of natural energy (along with solar energy and human labour) and the fastest means of transport on land until the discovery of electricity and the steam engine (Raulff Reference Raulff2018), and the author William Taylor is well aware of this. He provides us with data documenting this journey from the beginning of the evolution of the Equus species to the nineteenth century, while successfully leaving the horses “themselves to tell the human-story” (p.xv), and argues that this is only possible through archaeology.
After an overview of domestic horse evolution, the domestication process is detailed. He does not try to ‘vote’ for a single domestication centre but critically declares “we see that identifying early horse domestication is particularly difficult; after all, domestication itself is a continuum of different types of relationships between humans and horses” (p.54).
The next step in horsemanship was to incorporate the use of the wheel into the interaction between man and horse. The wheel's invention is related to the centres of horse domestication in central Eurasia and spread from there during the fourth millennium BC. Taylor rightly states that in the third millennium, equines such as hemiones and donkeys were used as cart and pack animals in the Near East. A chapter about the light, two-wheeled chariot, which became a status symbol and an advantage in combat during the second millennium BC, follows and the author links its invention to the Catacomb culture.
Before 2000 BC domestic horses spread into all the steppe areas across Eurasia, which is the horses' preferred habitat and where they thrive best. The wide steppe areas (even larger after the 4.2ky climate change events) are the focus of Taylor's book. This delivers a thought-provoking reflection on how we usually interpret historical processes: we are accustomed to looking at history anthropocentrically and in regions where states and civilizations were founded. Horse-related culture originated in other areas (steppe region of Eurasia) and spread from those to the centres of civilization, bringing with them other stimuli that further accelerated development of the civilization centres of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The book devotes extensive space to discussing the spread of horses into Central and South Asia as horses also arrived there around 2000 BC and were an important driver of the globalisation process in the Old World: “Horses helped build the first inklings of a truly globalized world in the 2nd millennium B.C.E., moving peoples, goods, ideas, languages, and organisms into areas that they had never been before” (p.98). During this time, the horse also becomes part of the cosmological systems across the (equine) globalised world, replacing deer or cattle as the bearer of major cosmological events (such as, the transport of the sun into the sky, transitions into the world of the dead, etc.).
The origins of horseback riding are currently intensely debated, and Taylor's book reflects this. On the one hand, there is an effort to show that the first riders came from Yamnaya culture complexes; others view this theory sceptically (Trautmann et al. Reference Trautmann2023; Hosek et al. Reference Hosek2024). The author believes that the first equestrian attempts may have occurred in Mongolia and supports this with his research results. By around 1000 BC horsemanship changed, and horseback riding became a common technique and with it a new way of mobile pastoral life enters the scene.
Taylor also traces the development of the horse bit and suggests that the joint metal snaffle bit could be related to riding, as it provides more control over the horse. Horseback riding is as significant an advancement as the chariot's was. Further discussed is the improvement of horsemanship, again by the Eurasian steppe peoples, who began experimenting with saddles and effectively using weapons while riding (especially bow and arrow). The impressive equestrian feats of these people inspired various myths, which cannot be correctly understood or interpreted without archaeology, according to Taylor. This developed over time into the training of warhorses, the formation of the first organised cavalries, and the first horsemanship manuals (by Xenophon, a fourth-century BC Greek writer and military leader).
Horse culture, and equestrian culture in particular, played a significant role in the formation of ancient China. The horse became synonymous with the ‘modern state’, but horses became scarce before the end of the BC era. “In the globalized world (…) control over horses began to define political and economic fortunes” (p.148). The Silk Road began to take shape and horse-oriented cultures and the control of steppe or pastoral areas largely shaped the world at this time.
During the first millennium AD new innovations were brought forward, such as stirrups and the gradual formation of the frame saddle to support the rider and protect the horse's back, again developed in the steppe area. Around 1200 AD the climate changed in favour of the steppes, increasing the grazing areas in Central Asia and strengthening the superpowers there. Interestingly, the author does not dwell on equestrian peoples such as the Huns and the Avars, who, from a European point of view, are crucial phenomena in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, but they are only mentioned in the context of the fall of the Roman Empire. The reader will not be surprised by the number of horses, horse stations and riders that made up the Central Asian network. It was the horse-world centre and the base of the Mongol Empire's expansion.
The pivotal role of horses in the Arab world is the next topic. Here, horses had to adapt to new conditions of sub-tropic temperatures with extremely meagre grazing grounds but, when they did adjust, they again facilitated exchanges and trade across the desert and over long distances. The trans-Saharan trade is emerging as a result. The chapter on horse culture in central Africa discusses a phenomenon about which we know almost nothing, although the savannah was logically a suitable environment for horse breeding just as the forest/jungle was its natural limit.
Next, the book looks to the New World and how horses were transported there. Taylor first delves into the history of transport of horses on ships. These endeavours date back to the Bronze Age. Examples from antiquity fit right in here, such as, when horses were shipped across the sea to Rome, or even earlier with the horses from Cyrenaica to Greece, or from the mainland to Crete as early as the first half of the second millennium BC. There were specialised ships, designed for transporting horses, called the Hippagoga known from Byzantine sources. Another interesting evidence for the transportation of horses is the Bayeux tapestry, which eloquently depicts horses being loaded onto and disembarking from a ship, showing very elaborate horsemanship.
Taylor sees the transport of horses across the Atlantic as a gradual process: the Portuguese (and their horses) first reached Madeira, then the Azores and then, in 1493, Colón took the first horses to America. A great knowledge of the sources is demonstrated to illuminate the progress of horses spreading across the American continent and their early use by native peoples. The spread of horse culture into South America, the Pacific and Australia is also outlined. The final chapters are about the importance of horses in the North American colonisation process and, in fact, their contribution to mechanisation as horses worked in mines or powered the first large machines.
Taylor concludes by stating that horses are “the fountain of resilience” (p.222). The coexistence of horses and humans continues, develops and takes new forms, and in some cases life with horses continues as it did centuries ago, for example, in Mongolia.
The European reader may miss a deeper discussion on horses in antiquity or the time of the migrations period and their horses, but it is a current and important trend in recent scholarship to appreciate that Europe was not always the centre of development.
Barbara Morrisson's beautiful illustrations throughout the book are noteworthy and a significant part of the volume consists of an extended use of notes and a rich bibliography. Taylor combines this compiled knowledge with the results of his own research and fieldwork and is not afraid to engage in controversial topics (such as domestication, the beginnings of horseback riding) and expresses his views clearly. The book is a comprehensive and enlightening overview of the history of horsemanship as a global phenomenon; it offers a unique perspective, focusing on the horse's point of view rather than the human, which is a refreshing departure from the usual anthropocentric view of history.
