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 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.
Latest Answers