I recently watched a documentary about a brief history of each continent when I noticed horses were really common everywhere for an example Genghis khan in Asia, Saladin in Africa, natives in North and South America and all over Europe too. I know they’ve been brought with settlers to Australia because it was mentioned in the documentary but what about the other continents ?
In: 756
Horses were used everywhere from labor to war so they needed a lot of them, so they bred them a lot. There’s not much science to it really.
Horses, as best we can tell, we’re domesticated in what is now Mongolia/Kazakhstan. As the Mongols, especially under Ghengis Khan, expanded their empire, conquered peoples said damn, these horse things sure are effective, we gotta get us some of those!
And so they did, they kept them, selectively bred them, and took them everywhere they also went to conquer, across land and sea (yes, they were loaded on boats). And animals being animals, they do have a tendency to wander off, get loose, or get left behind. So your Australia example is it in a nut shell, writ large.
Interesting side note- horses were native to North America, but started migrating to Asia around the same time humans started migrating to North America. And they so they met, starry-eyed lovers across a crowded Bering Straight…
Natives in the Americas actually didn’t have horses until Europeans arrived, the most they had were llamas. Horses went extinct in the Americas when humans arrived.
Once domesticated they were really useful. They took the roll of a lot of stuff we only really got during or after the industrial revolution:
* Motorbikes
* Cars
* Trucks
* Tractors
* Stationary Motors
If you have something that solves a lot of your problems and you can make more of it, why wouldnt you?
The biggest issue with horses is upkeep. You need to feed them care for them. But if your society is adapted to horses you get benefits from scale.
From there you can trade them to other nations or bring them with you when you colonize/conquer places and spread them around the world.
There’s a discussion in Guns Germs and Steel about how effective horses are for the military, gives the attacker speed, force, height advantage.
>I know they’ve been brought with settlers to Australia
Same goes for the Americas. Horses were brought by European settlers. The natives bought/traded for em because they were useful.
Horses are strong, and fast. Easy to feed. Have good stamina. They’re good for farming, war, or just traveling from place to place with a wagon.
Tldr: They’re everywhere because we put them everywhere. We put them everywhere because they help us in most circumstances
Parts of this are true, parts of this not.
Horses evolved I believe in Central Asia, and, once domesticated by humans, quickly spread across the continent wherever humans were, because if you’re trading goods with your neighbors and you have horses, you’re gonna do it on horseback, and they will quickly grow interested in getting some of those cool horses, on top of humans spreading wild horses far outside their normal habitats, where the animals managed to adapt. Horses spread throughout The Old World mostly through human intervention and support, because they’re very social animals, thus animals we can get to do what we want, and very *useful* animals, more so every few generations of selective breeding, for transport, for labor, and for warfare.
Pre-Columbian Exchange (The exchange of diseases, plants and animals between the Old and New World following the America’s discovery by Europeans), there were no horses in the Americas. The first Horses in the America’s were released by the Spanish colonists in what would eventually become Mexico, what we call Mustangs, who spread across the continent as an invasive species alongside wold pigs. The American Great Plains were not heavily populated at this time, both because they weren’t and aren’t that habitable of a location, and because most of the *Americas* had become a lot less heavily populated due to the advent of European diseases absolutely devastating the continent and its population. It is in this post-Colombian Exchange America that the Plains Native American Tribes emerged, adapting to new circumstances with a new way of life, living in the Great Plains in nomadic tribes, riding horses and Hunting massive Buffalo herds.
I did some local history research and the amount of cart horses and farm horses was very high years ago, literally dozens of them even in small villages. The amount of horse shit was a real public health problem too. Just think everything was pulled around by horses were now we have vans and lorries. Thousands and thousands of horses were needed so they were bred in large numbers and as soon as motor vehicles took over they stopped breeding them. Some of the breeds of heavy horse are actually endangered now. It was the same with riding horses too.
Natives in North and South America did not have horses until settlers brought them to the Americas.
Before cars were invented animals were used to haul and for riding. Horses were some of the best animals domesticated for these purposes. They were first domesticated in Asia, and then said domestication spread to Europe and Africa because their domestication was a great advantage. It allowed people to travel faster and farther in a day, it allowed them to carry more things by having saddle bags or having the horse pull a wagon. It allowed for more crops to be planted by the horse pulling farming equipment. Etc. Their usefulness to humans was why they spread everywhere, we literally took them everywhere.
Australia and the Americas got their horses when settlers came and brought the horses with them. As for the Native American Tribes getting horses. They either traded for them, or they captured feral horses that escaped from European Settlers, or where purposefully released by European Settlers to establish herd populations that future settlers could then re-domesticate. The Spanish in particular where prone to doing that with animals such as horses, cattle, goats, pigs, etc.
Horses made everything easy and they were better than using any other animal for labor.
They originated from the Americas, at the time they were the size of small dogs and crossed into Eurasia via the Bering Land bridge some 2million years ago.
The American horse then had an extinction or near extinction some 7000 years ago and never really grew that large.
The people on the other continent though bred them to be huge. Being able to move long distances relatively quickly made them vital for trade and war, and helped then spread damn near everywhere for their utility. Other animals were used for specialty things like elephants make ferocious war animals in India, but need so much food you can’t really take them anywhere that can’t feed them.
Ox were strong for manual labor like plowing. But rather slow.
Cows aren’t good for pulling carts because they are rather lazy. Goats are to small. Etc.
Horses are just the most well rounded in terms of speed strength and food logistics so they became the most prevalent animal used by everybody.
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