The human adventure was still in its early stages, when the horse became the object of human attention. In the Paleolithic period, where people hunted to survive, men made wonderful use of this species, particularly abundant at the height of the last ice age (Würm glaciation), which was the horse. They represented it on the walls of their caves, which were both shelters and sanctuaries. The horse competed with other game: bison, aurochs, ibex, etc. How did the horse pass from the status of game to that of man’s companion as we know it today? What was the process of domestication and especially for what reasons man wished to tame the animal?
The horse: from game to domestic animal
In fact, it is not forbidden to think that man may have felt the need to build up food reserves by keeping alive some of the horses (or reindeer) that he had trapped in corrals. However, if he already had a first experience of domestication with the dog, he did not push the relationship so far with the horse.
Then came, with the end of the ice age, the retreat of the steppe, a tundra, and the advance of the forest throughout Western Europe. The horse disappeared temporarily from the archaeological (in Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic contexts) and paleontological faunas. At the beginning of the Holocene, around 8000 B.C., the horse was seen to have retreated from its western range, preserving here and there islands of relict populations, notably in Spain and France, with the bulk of the equine populations distributed between Eastern Europe and Central Asia. During most of the Neolithic period, the horse was absent or almost absent. But in the Late Neolithic (beginning of the 4th millennium BC), its frequency increased punctually in Central Europe, probably because of deforestation, which made vast open lands available to it.
These horses, contemporary for example with the Altheim culture (3800 to 3400 B.C.), were between 125 and 145 cm at the withers.
The beginnings of horse domestication
In the cultural and scientific context of the nineteenth century, when domestic breeds were being selected and fixed, with the creation of the books of origins (herd- books and studbooks), the specialists of the time wanted to find or imagine, for each type of a domestic species, a particular ancestor.
Among others:
- Sanson (1869) identified eight types of horses, each with “its” ancestor;
- Franck (1875) distinguished more simply, among the domestic horses, the horses of oriental origin with “warm blood” and the horses of western origin with “cold blood”;
- Antonius (1922) differentiated the following three groups: Equus orientalis descended from the Tarpan, Equus ferus descended from Przewalski’s Horse and Equus robustus descended from the Pleistocene horses of Western Europe (Germanic horse…).
These theories are nowadays outdated, and we come back to the first opinion of Darwin (1868), who admitted the mono specific origin of the domestic horse. But, in the still very vast Eurasian distribution area that the Holocene horse retained, it is conceivable that numerous local forms were found, adapted to diverse environmental conditions, and that the domestication of the horse, if it was pluricentric, could have called upon different wild forms of the same species, as was the case for the dog or the ox.
At least two local forms of horses are known, one in Europe, recently disappeared, the Tarpan (Kyrgyz word for wild horse), and the other in Central Asia, still alive, the Przewalski’s Horse (or Taki, in Mongolian). These are the ancestors of the Tarpan that were domesticated, in their steppe form (Eastern Europe), Scythian (Balkans and Anatolia), sylvan (Northern Western Europe) or Lusitanian (Iberian Peninsula).
Some examples of early domesticated horses
To illustrate our point, we will present two examples of horses of the past
Horse of the past: The Tarpan
The Tarpan, thought to have the same number of chromosomes as the domestic horse (2n = 64), was described by the German naturalist Gmelin in 1771. It was a small horse of 135 to 150 cm at the withers (the only preserved specimen measures 133 cm), with a mouse-gray coat, lighter in winter, with a black stripe on the dorsal median line, a short and stiff mane, and a short and thin head. About the coat, Herodotus (Inquiry, IV, 52) speaking of Scythia, evokes this great lake, mother of the river Hypanis (the Bug), “around which graze wild horses, which are white”.
This same animal would have been hunted sporadically during the Epipaleolithic period, then in the Neolithic, where it is found, on occasion, in the remains of fauna consumed by the Neolithic. It would have been domesticated towards the end of this period. It was still living in the wild in Poland in the 17th century, but it was the victim of excessive hunting throughout the 19th century and the last individuals in semi-freedom disappeared in Askanya Nova in Ukraine before 1876: these out-of-control horses were accused of attacking the crops and bred domestic mares. This horse survived in captivity until the beginning of the 20th century and the last representative of the (sub)species died in 1918.
Note: some current isolated breeds claim a direct filiation with the Tarpan: the small Pyrenean-Cantabrian horses (Pottok, Asturian, Galician, Garrano, Merens), the British ponies (Dartmoor, Eriskay…) and the Polish Konik. A Tarpan reconstructed by the Heckest brothers can be seen at the zoo in Munich-Hellabrunn.
Horse of the past: Przewalski’s horse
Przewalski’s horse reminds us of the horses represented in cave paintings. Przewalski’s horse has 2n = 66 chromosomes. Completely ignored in the West, it was discovered in Dzoungaria by the Russian explorer Nikolai Mikhailovich Przewalski (1839-1888), during his 2nd expedition in Central Asia, in 1876. It was described by Poliakov in 1881: the horse measures about 137 cm at the withers, it is more compact than the Tarpan, it has a busted muzzle, particularly high teeth, and therefore thick jaws, an isabelle coat, a short and erect mane. It reminds us of certain horses of the Franco-Cantabrian cave art (Lascaux, Labastide, etc.). Like the Tarpan, Przewalski’s Horse was over-hunted and disappeared from its natural environment in the 20th century. But the species (or subspecies) was luckier: about fifty subjects were captured in 1901 by Hagenbeck, a man of Hamburg circus shows; this batch is at the origin of all Przewalski’s horses still living today and which allowed their reintroduction in Mongolia (1992).
Where did the domestication of the horse occur?
Domestication took place in the natural range of the wild horse, when the presence of horses, the needs of humans and their “receptivity” to the idea of domesticating a new species agreed.
- A focus of horse domestication could be found between the middle Volga and the southern Urals, somewhere among the Tatars, Bashkirs or Kazakhs of today, in Neolithic sites dated from the 6th to the 4th millennium B.C. However, the sites from the second half of the 5th millennium belong to a “non-horse” culture, the Dnieper-Donets culture; the “horse” culture of Serednij Stog will come only later. On the other hand, the Kazakh sites where, for the time being, horses have been found in large numbers, would only date back to the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 2nd millennia (Botaj site, near Petropavl, where 99% of the remains belong to horses, older than 3 or 4 years and between 128 and 152 cm in height).
- Another focus of domestication could be further east, in Turkestan, a vast region located north and east of Iran and Afghanistan, between the Caspian Sea and the Sin-Kiang of the Uighurs, but nothing has been specified to date.
- Further west, in the plains of Ukraine, the Dereivka site, in its Ha phase, dated from 3750 to 3350 B.C. and belonging to the Chalcolithic (“Eneolithic”) culture of Serednij Stog, has yielded the remains of horses whose domesticity has been recognized for the first time.
Why was the horse domesticated?
It is certainly not because the horse is more abundant on certain sites of the end of the Neolithic in Central Europe that we must conclude that it was necessarily domestic: it could have been hunted, as it had been in the Palaeolithic period.
as it had been in Paleolithic times. Having already the main meat-producing species (sheep, goat, beef, and pig), man would have been curiously inspired, a priori, to undertake the difficult domestication of a powerful and rebellious animal for this sole purpose. On the other hand, there was nothing to prevent hunting it, without having to domesticate it, when it became locally abundant again.
Other reasons for the domestication of the horse must therefore be sought, which would be rather cultural and economic, and which are certainly related to the natural habitat of men, the vastness of the Eastern European expanses and its resources. Anthony provides a thorough analysis of the ecological and anthropological circumstances surrounding the context of Serednij Stog. He points out that innovation – in this case the domestication of a new species – was born out of necessity: population pressure was exerted at the edges of the Ukrainian steppe and riverine forests, the ecologically richest areas. Neolithic populations of the Cucuteni-Tripolije culture moved to the Dnieper, where they came into contact, around 4500 BC, with the Mesolithic populations of the indigenous Dnieper-Donets I culture, to whom they communicated the techniques of pastoral breeding.
The increase of the population would have determined a decrease of natural resources, compensated by the breeding and the cultivation of barley. But demography and settlement made the woods and their inhabitants, privileged game, retreat; the horse, which haunted the steppe of the hinterland, became more important in the hunting tables. The Dnieper-Donets II culture converts, around 4200-4100 BC, into the Serednij Stog culture, which is marked by deforestation, greater dependence on steppe resources and the use of horses. Between 4300 and 3800 B.C. a colder climatic episode occurred, the Piora oscillation; this passage may have been a valuable aid in the process of domestication, motivating men, whose herds of sheep and oxen did not stand up well to the cold. Horses constituted a food reserve better adapted to the harsh conditions; it became advantageous to control it. We are therefore still far from the beginnings of horseback riding in the true sense of the word.
At the beginning of the metal ages, it became urgent to develop the means of transporting fuels and metals. Knowing already the “technology” of traction by oxen, also by donkeys, it was enough to adapt the horse to it. But this proposal is more an effect than a cause of the domestication of the horse, because the consequences of an innovation cannot be anticipated.
The question, we see, remains open.
