How did horse riding change human history?
Raising horses and using them for riding is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of early mankind. This enabled people to cover long distances quickly for the first time and also changed the way of fought battles. Until now it was not certain when horses were domesticated and when the horse's power started being used on a large scale. Scientists have different opinions about this.
Now, recently, dna testing of 475 old and 77 modern horses has revealed something clear about this. Research published in a science magazine called 'Nature' has revealed that horses were actually domesticated twice. The first time it did not work out, but the second time it was successful. It has also been found that the use of horsepower for riding began in Eurasia around 2200 BC. This is about 1000 years later than previously estimated.
The history of horse domestication is as old as it is complicated.
Scientists believe that efforts to control the breeds of horses began around 2700 BC. During this period, the number of horses also decreased significantly. But after this, horses suddenly spread rapidly across Eurasia. Due to this expansion, almost all the local horse breeds were destroyed and new breeds replaced them.
This was the time when horses started being used on a large scale for riding. This proves wrong the belief that there was a large-scale migration of steppe people with horse herds to europe around 3000 bc and before that. Interestingly, in Botai, a settlement in Central Asia, the time between generations of horses was found to be very low around 3500 BC. This settlement was associated with horse enclosures and a horse-centered economy. This shows that horses were raised there even before the emergence of modern domestic breeds.
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