Sometime around 5,500 years ago, an event took place on the Eurasian steps that fundamentally changed the world. We don't know who did it or exactly when it took place, but it was one of the single greatest moments in all of human history. It ushered in revolutions in agriculture, transportation, and warfare, and its impact can still be witnessed around the world today. Learn more about the domestication of the horse and how it impacted the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The story of horses does not begin with their domestication by humans.

In fact, the human-horse relationship doesn't even begin with domestication. The modern domesticated horse has the taxonomic name of Equus Cabilus. It can trace its evolutionary roots back about 50 million years to a small dog-sized creature called Eohippus that lived in forests. If you remember back to my episode on how horses spread in North America, most of the evolution of the horse actually took place in North America, millions of years before humans ever arrived. During the various ice ages, they migrated from North America into Asia via the Bering landbridge, where they took a separate evolutionary path. The North American variant of the horse extinct about 11,000 to 10,000 years ago, possibly due to overhunting by humans, along with changes to their climate. Over in Eurasia, we know that horses were hunted by humans alongside other large herbivores for at least 30,000 years, as is evidence by cave paintings that show horses. This is a very important distinction that makes horses very different from other domesticated animals, such as cats and dogs. The domestication of cats and dogs is believed to have just happened, if you recall my previous episodes on the subject. Horses, however, were hunted for food.

They wouldn't have just wandered into camp and become friendly with the people sitting around a fire. Had such a thing happen, most Paleolithic humans would have probably thought to themselves, Hey, free meal. Horses were far from the first domesticated herbivores that were used as food. Sheep, goats, and cattle had been domesticated thousands of years before horses were. They were domesticated insofar as they were herded and moved place to place. They would have been kept in pens, possibly milked and sheared, but otherwise weren't domesticated in the same way that dogs were. This at least provides an idea as to what the first people to domesticate horses might have been thinking. They probably viewed domestication as something akin to how they used cattle or sheep. It was simply an easier way to get access to horse meat than constantly having to hunt them. All modern domesticated horses are distended from a single group, indicating that there was a single domestication event, somewhere. For the longest time, there were competing theories as to where horses were first domesticated. One of the contenders was the Iberian Peninsula. We know from fossil and archeological evidence that horses had been there for at least 50,000 years.

Another contender was Siberia, where horses had been found buried with human beings. Yet another theory, and this one has a bit more evidence, is that horse domestication occurred in in central modern-day Kazakhstan, about 1,600 kilometers northwest of the Caspian Sea. Their archeological digs have found the remains of an ancient people known as the bow-tie. The entire Bow-Tie culture seemed to have revolved around horses. They ate them, milk them, and used their skins. Archeological evidence shows that they were building corals and pens for horses. Nonhuman remains and the location are almost all horses, and the teeth from horse skulls indicate that they may have used bits. Even pottery from the site shows evidence of mare's milk. The date of the artifacts found at the bow tie site go back about 5,000 to 5,500 years. However, it really was a known if the horses they worked with were truly domesticated. They may have been similar to Reindier, used by the Sami people in Nordic countries, which are considered semi-domesticated. Later, DNA evidence found that the horses used at the bow tie site were not, in fact, the ancestors of today's domestic horses. They were, however, related to one of the last truly wild, as opposed to feral horses in the world, the Chowalski horses which can be found in Mongolia.

So if horses weren't domesticated in Kazakhstan, where were the first horses domesticated? The best answer we have to that question comes from genetic evidence, from modern horses as well as from ancient horses. The area where horses were probably first domesticated was located in a region including Eastern Ukraine above the Black Sea, Russia, north of the Caucasus, around the Volga River, and in Western Kazakhstan. One of the things that the genetic study of early horses found is that all modern domesticated horses are descended from a single male stallion and about 77 female mares. The genetic analysis of ancient horses raises several possibilities. One is perhaps the bow-tie culture did independently domesticate horses, but their horses just weren't the ones that happened to have caught on. Perhaps there was something about them that made them more difficult to tame or made them less docile. The other possibility is that the Chowalski horses in Mongolia, long thought to be the last truly wild horses on Earth, are in fact not wild horses. Given their genetic relationship with the Bow-Tie horses, they might actually be the descendants of those formerly domesticated horses. One of the events that had to have happened early after domestication was the discovery that horses could be ridden and used to pull carts.

In fact, this would have radically changed the perception and value of horses from something beyond mere cattle that could be used for food and milk. Horses allowed humans to travel further and faster than they could on foot. In fact, from the domestication of horses until the 19th century, the fastest anybody could travel on land was the speed of a horse. What isn't known, and may never be known, is if riding horses by sitting on them or driving horses by having them pull a cart or a chariot came first. You would think that riding would have come first just because there's very little to it. Just climb on the back of a horse, even if it means just putting a child up there. However, there isn't much in the way of archeological evidence to support this. We have very ancient images and artifacts consisting of ancient in chariots and carts. Things that would support riding, such as bridals and blankets, wouldn't survive well to be later found by archeologists. If horse domestication did indeed take place between the Black Sea and the North Caspian Sea, it would have been the ideal location to have horses spread to other cultures, given its central location between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

For about the first thousand years, horse technology, and it really was a technology, didn't spread very far. The group that's often credited with the explosion in horses is the Shintashta culture, which inhabited the steps around 2100 to 1800 BC. The Shintashda had developed chariots with spoke wheels, and by all accounts had developed a mastery over horses. They were nomadic and used horses to conquer many peoples who lived on the steps. In the process of doing so, they brought horses with them, possibly replacing any previous domestications using other species of horse like the bow-tie. Their efforts, either purposefully or inadvertently, brought horses to a wide number of people in and around the steps during the Bronze Age. These people soon discovered that these animals were not to be prized for their eat like a goat or a cow, but rather for what they could do. Horses could pull wheeled carts with far more goods that can ever be carried by hand. They could pull a plow to help cultivate more crops, and they could allow you to travel swiftly as well as give a significant advantage in battle. As horses spread, they began to be selectively bred.

The colors of coats of horses underwent a wide diversification, and the size of horses began to increase as horses were bred for strength and speed. To this extent, horses are very similar to dogs insofar as different breeds, which sometimes look dramatically different from each other, are all actually a single species. Horses became prized assets, often the greatest source of wealth in a community, and horses also found their way into the mythology of many cultures. Oxen had been domesticated about the same time or a little earlier than horses. When cultures with domesticated oxen came across horses, they often found them to be superior. Horses are faster, more agile, versatile, and are easier to train. They could be used in the field as well as in combat, and could travel much longer distances. The spread of horses across both Europe and Asia is often credited with the rise of civilizations and empires of both continents. Without horses, much of what we know about the ancient world wouldn't have been possible. Many have wondered if the people of Eurasia just got lucky. If a species of easy to domesticate draft animals hadn't been there, then history would look very different today.

It also raises the question, why didn't other parts of the world domesticate something equivalent to the horse? In particular, sub-Saharan in her in Africa and the Americas. In Africa, there is one animal in particular that would seem to be a great candidate as a horse substitute, the zebra. Zebras are members of the genus Equus, along with horses. They have hooves and a mane and look very much like horses, especially if you're willing to ignore their stripes. Yet, zebras were never domesticated, and the fact they weren't domesticated wasn't for a lack of trying. Zebras are simply different creatures. They can very aggressive and tend to panic. They aren't as strong as horses, are challenging to breed in captivity, and they don't have a hierarchical social structure like horses, which can be taken advantage of to tame horses. Likewise, in South America, llamas and alpacas were domesticated, but they had nowhere near the size and strength of a horse. They couldn't carry the same burdens or travel as fast. And just to end, if you want to engage in a bit of alternate history, you can imagine what might have happened in North America if horses hadn't gone extinct 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.

It really isn't too much of a stretch to imagine native peoples in North America domesticating horses thousands of years ago. If they had been able to harness the speed and power of horses, the historical trajectory of the world may have been radically different. I've covered the origins of many different inventions and discoveries in previous episodes, and I've also covered the domestication of various animals, from cats and dogs to chickens. However, there is a very strong case to be made that the domestication of horses was the single most important step in human history. It would be right up there with the wheel in the discovery of fire. While we might not use or even see horses as much anymore, none of what we have today would probably exist if it wasn't for the domestication of the horse.

The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer.

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