Approximately ten thousand years ago human societies began undergoing a major change in which people began domesticating plants and herd animals. This era, commonly called the Neolithic (“New Stone Age”) by many archaeologists, did not have a single starting point in either time or geography. While the domestication of many herd animals--such as cattle, sheep, and goats--seems to have occurred in association with the domestication of plants, this doesn’t seem to have been the case with horses.
We don’t know when horses were first domesticated. What we do know is that the ancient ancestors of domestic horses first evolved in North America, then migrated across the Bering Land Bridge into Asia, and about 8,000 years ago, the ancestral horses became extinct in North America.
During the past twenty-five years, archeology has been uncovering more clues about the domestication of the horse and its impact on culture. At present, the archaeological record suggests that the horse was first domesticated somewhere in the Asian Steppes. . Like other domesticated herd animals, domesticated horses were first used for food, milk, and hides. At present, the archaeological record suggests that horses were domesticated between 4500 BCE and 3400 BCE.
Domestication of animals, by the way, involves more than just taming wild animals: it involves breeding them and thus directing evolutionary changes to benefit humans. While archaeologists look for evidence of using horses for traction, riding, and milk as evidence of domestication, modern genetics in the form of DNA may provide a better understanding of the domestication process.
At some point in the distant past, people began using domesticated horses for transportation: for pulling wagons and chariots, and for riding. These innovations were a cultural revolution which changed peoples’ lives. In her entry on the domestication of the horse in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Marsha Levine notes that the impact of the horse on society was at least as great as that of the steam engine:
“The increased mobility provided by the horse would have enabled people to move further as well as faster and to take more with them than ever before. They could exploit larger and more diverse landscapes, maintain larger families, and increase the range of their trade contacts.”
While some archaeologists have suggested that the horse may have been domesticated during the Paleolithic period, most feel that horses were widely hunted during this period, but that actual domestication came much later. Marsha Levine writes:
“Horses are relatively uncommon in Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeological deposits. It has therefore been held that they could not have been domesticated during those periods. On the other hand, relatively large quantities of horse bones and teeth have been recovered from Chalcolithic (or Eneolithic) sites on the central Eurasian steppe.”
One of the questions regarding the use of horses for transportation centers around the use of horses for traction (pulling carts, wagons, and chariots) and for riding. In his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David Anthony writes:
“We also think that horseback riding began in the steppes long before chariots were invented, in spite of the fact that chariotry preceded cavalry in the warfare of the organized states and kingdoms of the ancient world.”
Wheeled vehicles are complex machines: they require wheels, but in addition there must be an axle to hold the wheels to the vehicle. David Anthony writes:
“We can say with great confidence that wheeled vehicles were not invented until after 4000 BCE; the surviving evidence suggests a date closer to 3500 BCE. Before 4000 BCE there were no wheels or wagons to talk about.”
After 3400 BCE, archaeological and inscriptional evidence for wheeled vehicles is fairly common.
The domestication of the horse and its use for transportation impacted human societies in many ways. Prior to horse transportation, the most efficient way of moving people and their goods was by watercraft which meant that rivers and coastlines were major thoroughfares. With the horse, people and goods could move across country and were not restricted to waterways.
With the horse, tribal and band territories expanded, giving them access to a wider range of natural resources. Based on the experience of Plains Indians in North America, the territorial range of pedestrian societies was about 50 miles and with the horse this expanded to about 500 miles. This expansion of tribal territories increased competition and conflict with other tribes.
Increased conflict between groups leads to warfare—organized attacks and battles by groups of warriors. The use of the horse in warfare included both mounted warriors and the development of cavalry and the use of wheeled vehicles—chariots. In terms of military strategy, the use of horses provided many advantages and often led to military victories and conquests.
Archaeologically we often find evidence of horse domestication associated with social stratification. This is particularly evident in high-status burials in which an individual is buried with horses, chariots, and exotic trade goods. This suggests that societies which adopted the domesticated horse often had a social system in which some individuals or groups had greater access to material goods and power, both political and spiritual, than others.
What was once called the Neolithic Revolution—the domestication of plants and animals—changed human societies in many ways. However, the pattern of the domestication of the horse and its impact upon human societies is very different than the domestication of cattle or of plants. Rather than being a part of an agricultural revolution, the domestication of the horse is perhaps best viewed as a kind of transportation revolution. While farming is associated with settled communities, the domestication of the horse is associated with an expansion of migration, trade, and warfare.
More Human Origins
Human Origins: Domesticating Fire
Human Origins: Ancient urbanization
Human Origins: A pre-farming religious monument
Human Origins: Cooperation
Human Origins: Religion and the brain
Human Origins: Cultural Evolution
Human Origins: Clothing
Human Origins: Fossil Evidence