Episode 153: Horses and Humans throughout History

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;22;23
William Taylor
Yeah. You know, I think that horses, especially in the Americas here, they’re often lumped in with this sort of guns, germs and steel, a tool of colonization. And, and certainly horses were used in the subjugation of native folks. But I think one piece of the story that’s often missing is the extraordinary role that horses played in maintaining sovereignty.

00;00;22;23 – 00;00;34;07
William Taylor
Folks like the Comanche bringing to heel European colonial powers like the Spanish. Right? For a very long time.

00;00;34;10 – 00;00;49;18
Ben Wright
This is 15 Minute History, a podcast for educators, students, and anyone interested in history featuring the minds and voices of the University of Texas at Austin.

00;00;49;20 – 00;01;14;09
Ben Wright
Horses and humans have gone hand-in-hand for centuries. Our guest today is CU Boulder Professor William Taylor, whose new book, Hoofbeats, takes us across thousands of years and thousands of miles to explore how horses help create the human world we live in today. In doing so, Taylor challenges our understanding of pre-history and reflects upon what our relationship with horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.

00;01;14;12 – 00;01;16;27
Ben Wright
Professor Taylor, welcome to 15 Minute History.

00;01;17;00 – 00;01;17;27
William Taylor
Thanks for having me on.

00;01;18;01 – 00;01;30;12
Ben Wright
You’re covering a whole expanse of human history, but you’re looking at a very specific topic. What does human life look like? Right before the domestication of horses. And when is that and where is that?

00;01;30;14 – 00;01;53;23
William Taylor
So this is a question that, has been really difficult to pin down for a long time. But I think with the recent, innovations in archeological science, we’re really starting to hone in on a particular window. And that is, you know, the the margins of the, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains here, kind of at the interface between Europe and Asia.

00;01;54;11 – 00;02;20;14
William Taylor
Right at the end of the third millennium BC. And this is a time period in which there’s a lot going on in this whole kind of zoom out a little bit and think about the region. There’s a lot of incredible things going on. You know, as early as ten, 11, 12,000 years ago, folks in some areas of Western Asia have been domesticating, animals like cattle, sheep and goat.

00;02;20;17 – 00;02;57;26
William Taylor
By the fourth millennium BC, the agricultural systems of this region had started to incorporate animal transport. So probably the earliest evidence we have for animal transport is animals like cattle being used for agricultural labor. Right. And initially things like pulling plows or sledges, soon turned into with the pairing of the, the wheel and, you know, the invention of the wheel as a transport item probably around this time as well.

00;02;57;29 – 00;03;35;20
William Taylor
Then you see those cattle transport systems being applied to people. It’s it’s sort of astonishing how quickly we went from the development of agriculture or transport into people pulling wagons into people using these things to kill each other, a kind of, weaponized versions of animal carts and, and other animals were domesticated for transport purposes, too. Out of the Nile Valley at around 3000 BC, donkeys entered the equation right, and donkeys spread out of Egypt into the eastern Mediterranean, too.

00;03;35;25 – 00;04;13;15
William Taylor
And so in the third millennium BC, you had this incredible shifting landscape of animal transport. Donkeys got plugged into the cattle cart system, the carts got lighter, the carts got more creative. People were using animals in for trade and for battle. This is a time also in which pastoralism and herding animals was a strategy that was starting to take off in the steps, especially in those areas that were adjoining Mesopotamia, you know, so crossing into the Caucasus, you start to get pastoral cultures.

00;04;13;18 – 00;04;32;06
William Taylor
You know, folks are moving around using livestock in new ways and using them to make, use of the kind of dry grassland areas in a way that, perhaps wasn’t possible before without that animal transport mobility.

00;04;32;09 – 00;04;38;20
Ben Wright
What characteristics of a horse make it so useful? For a human endeavor?

00;04;38;22 – 00;05;14;26
William Taylor
There’s a lot of special things about horses, right? And a lot of those special things have to do with their adaptation to grasslands. Right? So, you know, grassland environments are these big, open. They’re often people often use the word seeds of grass. Right. Grass is a tough material to eat and digest. Right. And so, you know, animals had to develop the digestive adaptations to the teeth and, and, and stomach, but the ones that are most valuable to us in particular, are things like, obviously speed.

00;05;14;26 – 00;05;43;20
William Taylor
Right. So horses are big, strong animal, their size and strength and speed really kind of an adaptation to deal with life in the open steppes where you can’t like, dip and dodge and hide in a particular way. You really have to evade predators, right. And and being larger than a predator, being faster than a predator are are things that also made horses very, very good at transportation.

00;05;43;20 – 00;06;15;21
William Taylor
Right. But in fact, probably the most important one is, is behavioral and social. You know, a herd social dynamic is this incredible tool for cooperation in the steps. Right? One of the best ways to deal with predators is to communicate with each other, to act as a group in a coordinated way and to have, you know, societies that can really navigate the challenges of life in the steppe together.

00;06;15;24 – 00;07;02;13
William Taylor
And those relationships, I think, in many ways, have been the most important pieces for allowing horses to connect with humans more deeply. People can communicate with horses better than they can communicate with almost any other animal, with perhaps the exception being the dog. And this stuff is shown through, you know, clinical trials that horses, and people are uniquely gifted at, at intercept cross species communication with each other and also, you know, herding horses is kind of allows folks to slot into rather than replace horses existing social structures.

00;07;02;13 – 00;07;27;12
William Taylor
Right. So a herd of horses in, in a place like Mongolia, you’re, you know, often the steps and a lot of these words are living free ranch. You know, they’re not fenced, they’re not living in stalls. They’re living in a, a social group essentially. They, we are sort of controlling rather than replacing a natural horse social structure.

00;07;27;13 – 00;07;30;26
William Taylor
Right. The kind of harem group. And where there’s a lead stallion. Right.

00;07;30;29 – 00;07;55;16
Ben Wright
One of the things horses are brilliant at is getting things from A to B quicker than humans can. So we’re talking about, horses having an impact on trade, having an impact on warfare and having the impact on communication. Would that be the big three? Would there be others? And could you walk us through a little bit, that horse impact on, on, on, on trade warfare and communication.

00;07;55;19 – 00;08;25;27
William Taylor
Yeah. So I do think that you’re right that one of the things horses are best at is getting, people and information and goods from point A to point B, right. And that’s in many ways one of their oldest functions. But I think the other one that gets left out a lot and the one that is probably, you know, not going anywhere anytime soon is horses are also, they’re also livestock, right?

00;08;25;28 – 00;09;04;08
William Taylor
Horses are animals that are playing an important role in human, you know, economies and subsistence in certain areas of the world. Right. And that is also one of their most ancient roles and functions. So in places like Inner Asia, Mongolia, but also other areas of Central Asia, horses are being used to produce milk and meat. Right. And any place and where horses are subsisting in kind of horse habitat, right grassland zones of the world, they have an ecological function that has made them important to people in various ways.

00;09;04;08 – 00;09;27;09
William Taylor
Right. And so and again, in a place like Mongolia, there’s still more horses than people, and only a fraction of those animals on any given day are being used for something like transport. But they as a livestock animal, not only are they producing things like meat and milk, they’re also important part of a kind of a multi-species strategy, right?

00;09;27;09 – 00;09;38;12
William Taylor
They’re really good at accessing crusted snow and a tough winter. And some of these things that help them, work collaboratively with other animals in terms of surviving a tough winter or that sort of thing.

00;09;38;12 – 00;10;10;22
Ben Wright
So one thing that strikes me about that is if you’re not interested in building an empire, you have a very different relationship with with horses as a community. But if you are interested in building an empire, that logistical advantage, being able to get people, goods, weapons, communiques from A to B, that becomes integral. And we see the rise in, forms of empire that are totally reliant on, on horses for their success and sustainability.

00;10;10;24 – 00;10;40;26
William Taylor
Yeah. I think one of the most incredible things that horse domestication did is it totally shifted the geopolitics of the whole world in the sense that almost, except in the few areas where there either were not horses or horses couldn’t survive, you know, especially in the tropics. Access to horses became, you know, this, existential need for folks that wanted to maintain power.

00;10;40;29 – 00;11;10;03
William Taylor
And so you see that within a few centuries of horse domestication, folks with horses in the military since toppled the great empires of, you know, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley, Shang China, right. And thereafter, leadership of folks that came to power in those regions were highly, highly focused on where can we get enough horses to maintain our systems of authority, communication, trade and control.

00;11;10;03 – 00;11;41;08
William Taylor
Right. And so this meant that you’re ancient civilizations of places like China were highly motivated to develop trade routes that went in many ways around the area for the greatest supply of horses, because simultaneously, you got a new sort of polity, empire, state emerging in the grassland zones of the world, you know, and the Mongol Empire being the most famous example.

00;11;41;08 – 00;12;06;00
William Taylor
But in fact, you can find these kind of steppe empires going back at least to the first millennium BC, folks that, you know, places that were once considered margins of the world became true center places. You know, in the book, I highlight some of these little vignettes from ancient Mongolia that show its global connections as early as the first millennium BC.

00;12;06;02 – 00;12;55;23
William Taylor
There’s a silver platter with a depiction of Hercules on it from a royal tomb in central Mongolia. You know, you had these cities and, and capitals that were linking through trade and, and movement and exchange of ideas and even biology, linking the continent through places like the cold Eurasian steppes. And that that aspect of being living in horse habitat, meaning that you had the tools of power, that also became true in places like West Africa, in the pampas of and, and in Patagonia, South America, and the Southern Cone, and especially, you know, here in North America, in the Great Plains.

00;12;55;25 – 00;13;17;13
Ben Wright
So horses give rise to new forms of power and new forms of empire, but also new forms of people. And obviously, this goes beyond the knights, medieval Europe and the samurai of early modern Japan. What types of people develop along the types of empire horses or enable them?

00;13;17;15 – 00;13;53;20
William Taylor
Yeah, I think this was one of the most important reasons that understanding people and horses needs that global perspective, because there have been so many different, forms of sort of rider around the world, both now and in the past. And, you know, when folks began ride on horseback, it was a a shockingly different kind of partnership, almost like, a new sort of commensal organism that emerged here.

00;13;53;20 – 00;14;17;26
William Taylor
Right? A person on a horse. It’s an incredible merger of two very different species. And you can even see that encoded in mythology. Right. Something like a centaur or whatever, reflecting different corners of the world, trying to wrap their head around this new phenomenon of a person on a horse. But how that relationship looked, it actually changed a lot over time.

00;14;17;26 – 00;14;51;24
William Taylor
And some of those were based on the unique you know, ecology and technology and tradition of a particular region. So when riders, you know, developed in the in the steps, this was before the era of things like the saddle and the stirrup and so forth. Combat was this very elusive phenomenon, right, in which folks would ride a horse, and they would do it was primarily, you know, bow and arrow, very, very like hit and run.

00;14;51;27 – 00;15;16;10
William Taylor
You’d get hit with a volley of arrows and, and the riders would disappear into the, the night or into the steps. Right. As, as the mechanics of horse riding changed in the innovation of things like a frame, saddle and a stirrup, people started to use horses differently. Right? You had some folks taking advantage of, oh, we can now ride with extraordinarily heavy armor, right?

00;15;16;10 – 00;15;45;00
William Taylor
We can do high impact combat, something like a lance, you know, bracing in the saddle for a lance to unseat a knight. It’s something that would have never happened in the first millennium BC. Different corners of the world from the, you know, the deserts of Arabia to the, you know, Savannah of of West Africa even into, you know, the Great Plains here, each each group of folks bringing a slightly different angle from a technology standpoint.

00;15;45;03 – 00;16;16;24
William Taylor
And a different angle from what they’re doing on horseback. Right. So, you know, you have, native folks here in the Great Plains that were not just it wasn’t just, a combat use of horses, but it was also, you know, hunting buffalo. Right. And so this incredible emphasis on speed and less on heavy, you know, anchoring to the horse and even they were innovating new ways to kind of maneuver and control horses, you know, long trailing ropes.

00;16;17;10 – 00;16;39;13
William Taylor
Things would allow you to hang on the horse, you know, off to the side of the horse and in a particular way. And so there’s a, incredible diversity of innovation around how horses were used and what a human on a horse looked like. You know how this kind of partnership manifested across the world. And so there’s no one answer to that.

00;16;39;13 – 00;16;41;12
William Taylor
But it is incredible to look at that.

00;16;41;12 – 00;16;58;21
Ben Wright
Global diversity horses are a great equalizer in this sense. Right? We see in the history of the United States, the battle between the Comanche and the Spanish, for example, where the country Indians take on horse technology and then compete with this global empire.

00;16;58;24 – 00;17;37;07
William Taylor
Yeah. You know, I think that horses, especially in the Americas here, they’re often lumped in with this sort of guns, germs and steel, a tool of colonization. And and certainly horses were used by European colonial folks in the subjugation of, of native folks in this hemisphere. But I think one piece of the chapter, that’s one piece of the story that’s often missing, is the extraordinary role that horses played in maintaining sovereignty, especially for folks living in grassland zones of North and South America.

00;17;37;09 – 00;17;59;25
William Taylor
Folks like the Comanche, you, you, you brought forward that example there of sort of bringing to heel European colonial powers like the Spanish. Right, for a very long time. The truth is that the final subjugation of a lot of indigenous folks in the Plains was really more about things like piping in large amounts of settlers, genocide, disease.

00;17;59;27 – 00;18;21;07
Ben Wright
So modernity has an impact on this relationship. The rise of railways, the rise of telegraphy creates a communication system faster than horses. New weapons arise that replace horses. How does the, separation of horses as a technology affect humans relationship to them? In the modern era?

00;18;21;09 – 00;18;54;11
William Taylor
Yeah, it’s that’s a very interesting question. You know, initially, things like the Industrial Revolution and railways, they didn’t actually decrease reliance on horses. They created this kind of frenetic chapter of the relationship in which horses were being asked to meet increasing demands put upon them by the emerging industrial infrastructure. Right. It wasn’t like you snapped your fingers and all of a sudden everyone was putting around in a diesel or gasoline engine, right?

00;18;54;13 – 00;19;23;28
William Taylor
In fact, you know, most of the emergence of things like these big draft horses that we take for granted today as part of, you know, the horse landscape, you know, these Budweiser horses, Clydesdales, or, you know, Belgian draft horses. They sort of relate to this time period in which horses were being asked to draw big, heavy machinery, right, rather than the the technology that they were using before.

00;19;24;01 – 00;19;46;24
William Taylor
There was this very fascinating chapter in which horses were connecting the dots for that emerging infrastructure. Right. And so we think of things like the Pony Express here in the western US, that was literally only about a year or two long, and it was replaced by the Telegraph. But as you know, the world began to try to adapt to these new technologies.

00;19;46;29 – 00;20;26;16
William Taylor
Horses were filling the gaps in really interesting and in many ways, challenging ways for them. That lasted quite a long time. And, you know, in some, some areas of the world, like Mongolia, you had a horse drawn, you know, essentially pony express communication until pretty deep into the the 20th century. Right. As we have moved away from, you know, day to day reliance on horses, it’s created a lot more of the kind of things that, to be honest, you just really didn’t see a lot of in the ancient world, a purely esthetic relationship with horses.

00;20;26;16 – 00;20;58;06
William Taylor
Right? So hyper focus on things like, you know, their particular appearance, you know, emergence of, you know, little toy breeds or, you know, a lot of the varieties and shapes and, focus that we see in, in horses as, you know, the equestrian world today, they’re, they’re pretty much products of the modern era as we’ve shifted away from having them mean be of high practical importance in everyone’s day to day.

00;20;58;06 – 00;21;07;12
William Taylor
Right. So I do think that’s had an impact here. Horses becoming more of a hobby and less of a utilitarian part of life.

00;21;07;22 – 00;21;10;22
Ben Wright
Well, Professor Taylor, thank you so much for joining us today.

00;21;10;24 – 00;21;13;14
William Taylor
Oh, it’s my pleasure to be here.

00;21;13;16 – 00;21;44;00
Ben Wright
15 Minute History is produced at the University of Texas at Austin in partnership with Not Even Past and Hemispheres in the College of Liberal Arts. It is recorded at the latest development studio. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media and visit our website for more information and resources. See you all next week!