William Taylor on the Domestication of Horses

04/19/23 • 43 min

When we think of major innovations in human history, what comes to mind are inert technologies - from the wheel to the computer - but one of the most significant developments occurred as the result of the relationship between humans and another animal, horses. The domestication of horses brought about a major sea-change in human society, as we became much more mobile. It affected everything from agriculture to warfare to the dissemination of language and culture. To discuss the domestication of horses and the impact of this relationship, I spoke with William Taylor, Assistant Professor and Curator of Archeology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. As Taylor explains, our understanding of this history continues to evolve thanks to new scientific tools, such as new types of genomic sequencing, but also due the work of anthropologists who observe present-day horse culture in Mongolia, contemporary Ukraine and other parts of the Eurasian steppes where the domestication of horses first took place.

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Maddie

Jennifer Lynch Fitzgerald tells the story of her relationship with Maddie, a mustang rescued in Habersham County, Georgia from a man who was collecting horses to sell for meat. When Maddie was found, she’d been tied to a tree for months, was malnourished and very angry. Jen tells how, in spite of her limited experience with horses, she learned to train or "gentle" Maddie. She discusses what she's learned about horse language and what it's meant to her to develop a relationship with an animal who was once wild. This is the first installment of a short series of episodes on horses. Horses have played such a significant role in human history that they are an important part of the nature/ culture nexus. Before we delve into the history, however, I wanted to start with a story of a relationship between one human animal and one horse animal.

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Study of a Liminal Corridor with Michael Inglis

There’s a funny little corridor tucked away behind a park in the Village of Pleasantville, New York where I live, where bears and bobcats amble through, walking atop the Catskill Aqueduct, the 100-year-old artery that delivers water from the Catskill mountains to New York City. Fellow resident, Michael Inglis, who has been hiking this patch of semi-wilderness for the past twenty-five years, has recently written a book about it, Woods and Water: Walking New York’s Nanny Hagen Brook. He calls this a “liminal space,” existing as it does at the margins of a human-dominated landscape. After reading his book, I asked him if we could take a walk along the Nanny Hagen brook together. As we explored off-trail, he pointed out the surprising number of native plants but also the corrosive effects of human influence, including the predominance of invasive plants that have escaped from suburban backyards into the wild. What ensued for me was a reflection on how human culture literally shapes the natural world, but also the ways in which nature can push back and be surprisingly resilient, when given the chance.