Evidence points to the horse being domesticated in Eurasia 5-6,000 years ago, at the end of the Neolithic period. Prior to domestication, the contact between man and horse was that of the hunter and the hunted. During the last stages of the Ice age, there is much evidence to show that primitive man used the wild horse herds as a source of food. The favorite tactic was to kill the animals by driving a group of them over a cliff, a method with obvious advantages over individual pursuit.

The cave drawings at Lascaux in France and Santander in Spain vividly illustrate the pursuit of horses, as well as providing a remarkable record of primitive life. Huge depositories of horse bones, relics of horse herds driven to their destruction, have been found in many parts of France, particularly at Lascaux and Salutre, but also at a number of other places.

The people responsible for domesticating the horse herds were probably nomadic Aryan tribes moving about the steppes bordering the Caspian and Black Seas. There is evidence of this happening, but it is probable that domestication was also taking place simultaneously elsewhere in Eurasia, in areas supporting a horse population.

These nomads possibly began as herders of semi-wild flocks of sheep, goats and, more importantly, of the tractable reindeer. The switch to horses would have been made out of practical considerations. In the harsh steppe lands, horses were a better proposition than other animals, better equipped to find food. Furthermore, horses are not migratory animals like the reindeer, whose movement is governed by the incidence of the "reindeer moss" on which they feed.

Initially, horses were herded. Their flesh provided food, their hides were used to make tents and clothes and the manure could be dried to make fires. Mares supplied milk, which could be fermented into kummis, the fiery brew of the steppes. In time, the mobility of the tribes was increased by employing the quieter animals to transport the household effects. The natural consequence thereafter was for men and women to ride the horses, an accomplishment which made the task of herding that much easier. To this day, horse herds are kept in the same fashion throughout the eastern republics of the USSR, and still provide the vey staff of life for the horse people of the twentieth century.

In rough, mountainous countries, men rode horses, even though these animals would have been of small stature. For the first time in history, in the flat, valley lands of the Middle east, horses provided the key to the establishment and maintenance of a succession of great empires. Their role was almost wholly confined to drawing the chariot. Two horses, however small, could pull a light chariot carrying two or even three men. The addition of two more horses, hitched abreast, reduced effort and increased speed potential. The solid wheel was being used in the Tigris-Euphrates valley around 3500B.C., and spoked chariot wheels were commonplace in Egypt by 1600B.C.

As methods of agriculture improved, horses could be hand-fed. This, combined with selective breeding, produced bigger, stronger and faster horses suited to the particular requirements of the day. For the most part, those requirements were concerned with warfare and transport, as well as, of course, for the purposes of sport in the great circuses of the classical civilzations of Greece and Rome.

At no point in the early civilizations was the horse employed in cultivation or in menial tasks. The horse was considered altogether too valuable, and work of that sort was left to oxen. Indeed, in the pre-Christian era, the horse had been an object of veneration, occupying an important place in mythology and religious ritual - often being regarded as the supreme sacrifice. In Ancient Greece, Ares, the god of war, traveled the firmament in a chariot drawn by white horses; the image of the goddess Demeter was the head of a black mare and her priests were known as "foals." White horses were occasionally drowned in honor of Poseidon, the god of the sea and the creator of horses, while horses belonging to kings and chieftains were frequently interred with their masters.

Possession of horses ensured mobility; it was the means of creating and extending civilizations, and sometimes it created new societies and a new concept of life. It did this for a short time with the American Indians. They formed the last of the world's true horse cultures, although they were not in the same class as the archetypal horse societies of the Mongols and Huns. Those nomadic horsemen of the steppes, under their greatest leader, Genghis Khan, built an empire on the backs of shaggy Mongolian ponies.

Reference: The Ultimate Horse Book; Elwyn Hartley Edwards; 1991