The Surprising New History of Horse Domestication
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I've got a pet theory about some western mythological tropes where horses are the economic and technological development that ties them together. the essential idea is that the young heroes mentored by centaurs (achillies and chiron, etc.) and "wisdom originating in the east," come from horse tribes from the steppes influencing proto-greek civilization, where centaurs came to represent those plainspeople in their mythology. as in central and east asia, by the result of being given empires, horsemanship was a channel for both evolutionary and divine assent, where if these other beings in nature favoured the people with the qualitites to ride them, then they were chosen to lead. horses became a force of evolutionary selection for us.
it's basically an "ancient aliens" quality theory about horses, which I'm sure archeologists will love as much as they do the tv one, but horses are more than just a thread in our history, they are a force of it. relating to other beings in a complete cultural symbiosis like that seems like a key evolutionary achievement to unlock on the way to becoming starfaring, and if you have any background working with them, they are rare companion beings to us in the real of nature we inhabit. lunacy? perhaps, but experiencing the world with horses isn't just pony rides, it's an encompassing philosophical pursuit.
Well, your theory is interesting. But let's not forget that dogs also exist.
Also, most mammals seem to empathize with other mammal species. We are not that different on this.
Various units have varied propensity to rout under pressure, and various officers have better or worse mods for the rolls to either (a) keep the unit from routing, or (b) reestablish its cohesion after they have.
I sometimes[0] think of those rolls when dealing with a spook.
(and, really, it won't take much to convince me that the amount of "presence attack" needed to convince a horse [or other four-legged[1] creature] that no, we are not going to die, we just need to do what we've already practiced, by the numbers is probably very closely related to the amount for convincing two-legged enlisted creatures that no, we are not going to die, we just need to do what we've already practiced, by the numbers...)
Lagniappe: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/tale/her-majestys-servants....
[0] it can also be useful during human childbirth (before the senior non-coms —the nurses— take over, anyway), but that's a much rarer event in my world than the "invisible squirrel" or "suspicious agricultural implement which was not there just yesterday".
[1] the Carter was usually the 2nd highest paid farm employee (as a specialist, more than the general manager) in the pre-mechanisation days here.
EDIT: you might also appreciate the argie variation on Buzkashi? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxkcfxsFqSU#t=108s
If you train them close to people firing guns, they won't flee from guns.
Some horses want to "overthrown" you even in normal circumstances, and almost all of them have a light instinct of getting you out from their backs. But I imagine a large part of forming a cavalry is picking (and breeding and training) the best horses for the role.
I can't find the citations to this in the article.
The tone of the article seems like this author has a particular schtick with the Yamnaya and / or the Indo Europeans. A lot of academia and journalists do this so not surprised.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355443578_The_origi...
Sounds like the author is supporting a theory that horse-riding spread along with Indo-Iranian languages (Sintashta culture) rather than earlier. Which doesn't seem crazy to me.
Horses were definitely livestock for a long time before that, kept for meat and dairy. They were very useful on the steppe because unlike cattle (which were imported from elsewhere), they can dig through snow to forage.
Whereas this author is arguing that the horse part happened later.
We already know the cultural-linguistic spread was more complicated than Gimbutas' original theory. That's not really controversial.
I much prefer alternative like Dan Carlin hardcore history or the rest of History
The peak flow of the Sarasvati was 10,000 BCE - 3000 BCE. Tectonic shifts and climate change caused the river to dwindle from 2600 BCE - 1900 BCE. From ~1900 BCE on the river fully desiccated and no longer reached the Arabian Sea.
We see hundreds of urban sites along the dried path of the ancient Sarasvati. For example, Bhirrana in northern India which has its earliest radiocarbon-dated layers at 7500 BCE.
There is cultural continuity between the early IVC sites (7000 BCE) and later (3000 - 2000 BCE) sites.
Now connect this with the vast corpus of Sanskrit works, particularly archaic Rig Vedic Sanskrit. We know the Sarasvati was described as perennial and large river reaching the sea in those works.
Later Sanskrit texts like the Mahabharata, with language features implying hundreds or thousands of years of linguistic evolution, describe the river dwindling and eventually disappearing "underground".
This means Rig Vedic Sanskrit was being used in parallel with the extremely large and advanced urban society in the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), which was larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined, at least in 3000 BCE.
The drying of the Sarasvati, which is known to have preceded vast migrations from the northwest Indian subcontinent to the northeast Gangetic plain, may have well forced climate-change migrants north into Central Asia, Mesopotamia and the steppes as well in the gradual lead-up to the Sarasvati's full collapse.
The current idea that Indo-European language entered India ~1500 BCE is completely incorrect, and oddly there's been no attempt to re-formulate the Indo-European language origins theory to match the data.