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 ?
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Horses were dumber and faster than donkeys.
Very good for dangerous work.
A donkey won’t do certain things because is smarter and does smell danger.
You can take a horse and make it do whatever you want, with some training, even charge into spears.
This said, early horses were very small. That’s why they were used for chariots but not for riding.
Later, by breeding, humans made horses to be bigger than donkeys and later even bigger than cows. At that point, horses were strong and big enough to carry a man into battle or to carry a man plus some 30-50kg of cargo, it became the perfect companion for most jobs.
An animal that useful can’t be ignored by a civilization.
American natives took the horse idea from the colonist and became very quickly a fearsome cavalry army. That’s a prime example on how fast a civ can take horses and put them to use.
Plus horses are vegan so you don’t have to carry food for them. Dogs need a lot more expensive “supply chain” to work.
Horses are strong and near tireless meat machines that can eat food that humans cant. We used them for their muscles. They could carry, move fast.
BUT then we invented motors, and motors were able to fill the same niche. Put em in carriages and now you dont need a horse to pull it. Put em in a mill and the mill will grind grain on its own without horses driving it. Put it in a tractor and now a horse doesn’t need to pull a plow.
So we replaced horses with motors. Because they were cheaper to maintain. Didn’t poop everywhere. And more compact.
What’s really interesting is that horses evolved in North America and disappeared from that continent when they crossed the land bridge during the last ice age to Asia. They were reintroduced by the Spanish in the 1600’s and immediately re-adapted to the Americas and proliferated.
Horses are so important to human civilization, we have historically gone to great lengths to take them everywhere. Even Hawaii.
Horses were the cars and gas engines of their day.
Anywhere we use a car or a gas engine now, they used a horse back in the day.
Horse provided mutal relationship with us. We provided for them and they let us use them for transportation and work. Most effective mode for many years.
The power of engines and motors is literally measured in horse power (HP does not stand for hit points IRL). It took a while before cars became common place, as well as public transport.
Horses were also brought to the America’s. There were native horses in North America but they became extinct. Horses were imported by the Conquistadors and Spanish settlers and successfully adopted by the Plains Indians.
The native horses in the Americas had actually long since died off and were replaced by their imported European relatives. They were reintroduced by the Spanish.
Americas did not have horses before they were introduced by Herman Cortez. “Wild” horses in Americas are just domestic horses that got loose and became an invasive species. As for why humans took horses everywhere they went it’s obvious – they were incredibly useful. Horse was your prime mover of everything, from farm work and transport to running pumps and mills, utility in war was also incredibly important. Pre-Columbus cultures in Americas had a huge disadvantage with lack of large domestic animals compared to Eurasian cultures, best they got was alpaca.
Its actually pretty simple. Traders know they will sell for a bunch of money and/or use them.
Horse pulls your wagons. You don’t just have enough to pull your wagons, you have a few spare because one might get lame. You show up at the next town in your trade route and they have never seen a horse before. But man can it pull a wagon.
They offer you a fair price for the horse, and again you have spares. Rinse and repeat over a few centuries and you have horses everywhere.
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