Comment by jojobas
12 days ago
I wonder what alternative history paths were there if the Clovis people figured out how to domesticate the horse in North America. Too bad they had other plans.
12 days ago
I wonder what alternative history paths were there if the Clovis people figured out how to domesticate the horse in North America. Too bad they had other plans.
Nothing to domesticate in that period. Horses were introduced to North America by the Cortez expedition of 1519.
The pedigrees of those horses are known. The Cortez expedition was launched by a government and the paperwork still exists. They were good Andalusians. So North American wild horses were descended from good lines of riding animals. They didn't start out feral.
Horses evolved in North America, and disappear from the fossil record along with other megafauna about 10,000 years ago.
Clovis people almost certainly interacted with horses, but likely as food.
Equines roamed North America for millions of years before Cortez and were extinct ~10k years ago, most likely by human hunting, together with the mammoth and other species.
"Multiple factors including hunting by early Natives, climate change, and disease are thought to have helped contribute to their demise. They disappeared around the same time as other large mammals like Wooly Mammoths."
https://web.archive.org/web/20140819083344/http://www.canadi...
The whole genus is supposed to have evolved in North America. Horses or very closely related species went extinct in NA somewhere between 6000-10000 BC and definitely existed alongside humans. It would not be at all surprising if human hunting contributed to their extinction.
Agriculture is almost certainly a prerequisite to domesticating horses (as they must be selectively bred in captivity), so hunter-gatherer tribes like the Clovis never had a chance to do so.
A nomadic horse based society like the Magyars can def selectively breed horses
Horses were domesticated long before the Magyars showed up. It’s much easier to selectively breed horses if you start with domesticated ones.
Pickets and hobbles are things; they don't require settlements.
EDIT: I'm an idiot, there are two even simpler things:
Shish kebab is a thing; it doesn't require settlements. When it comes time to sacrifice, are you more likely to eat the individual who's easy too get along with, or the ornery one?
Rocky Mountain Oysters are things; they don't require settlements. Hence the tripartite nature of Indo-European gender: Bull/Cow/Ox, Stallion/Mare/Gelding, Ram/Ewe/Wether, etc.
Is it? There were plenty of nomadic tribes dealing with various livestock, horses included, without agriculture.
They got those domesticated breeds from agricultural societies. The only example of an animal domesticated by hunter-gatherers is the dog.
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Now one could ask question is that process itself a form of agriculture? And that in these cases agriculture and domestication happened together.
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You're replying to an article about the Botai, whose sites lack evidence for domesticated crops like other early horse cultures.
Horses were domesticated thousands of years prior to the development of agriculture.
Other way around. Horse domestication was around 5000 years ago. Agriculture started around 12000 years ago and by around 8000 years ago had spread pretty widely.