History of Horses

The history of horses is quite an amazing story when we look back to the beginning.

All this information is credited to Desmond Morris from his book Illustrated Horsewatching. I highly recommend this book!

Since the time of the Old Stone Age and long before horses were domesticated they were simply a source of food. This was the limit of our relationship with horses. A little known fact about our hunting phase and the history of horses was that the number of wild horses was already decreasing without the help from humans. This was due to the rapid spread of thick forests at the end of the Ice Age across most of the temperate zone. Since horses relied on open plains and losing their source of food was diminishing little by little, it is estimated that the horse could well have become extinct had humans not intervened and domesticated them.

From here and by the second millennium B.C. the decline of the horse took a turn around. By 1500 B.C. there were two types of domesticated horses, the stocky breeds of the colder regions and the slender ones of the warmer regions. Selective breeding began and the beast of burden for the farmers and the soldiers were created.

During the history of horses in the New World, the Spanish intruders brought a handful of horses with them. Columbus took thirty and Corte sixteen. It wasn’t long before these descendants created a new population of Indian horses and change the social structure of people.

As the human population exploded so did the horses. After all we depended on the equine for farming, transportation, warfare, sport, ceremony and pleasure.

Many, many horses were killed while in battle throughout the history of horses. One horrible example was in a single day during the First World War 7,000 horses were killed! Of the one million horses sent to the front only 62,000 survived. And out of this number most were fed to prisoners of war or sold to farmers to become fertilizer. The war horse was gone forever due to the advancement of weaponry.

We may have domesticated them but they paid with their lives to serve our needs. Quite a price to pay! Yet I hope for a happier ending which is starting to unfold.

With the industrial revolution taking hold and the train, car and tractors replacing the horse for transportation and laborious work, finally after 5000 years it is a better time to be a horse.

Yet we as a human race need to look upon this noble animal to understand who they really are so we may care for them in a way that is natural to them not us. For I feel we have a debt to repay for their loyalty.

Our history of horses and observations are now reaching new heights. By understanding horse behavior and horse psychology we will discover the road that will lead us to creating an noble relationship with our horses.

We need to pay more attention to their social needs and stop using them to appease the human ego through financial gain or social status to obtain our perceived happiness.

There is much more to this noble horse than winning a race and I hope we can give back to the horse the dignity we once took.

Go back to Horse Behavior from History of Horses