A Working Animal

The shared history of horse and man can be traced back to the steppes of Kazakhstan – to around 3500 BC – where archaeological remains show that the animal was mounted and milked for the first time. During that period, massive technological changes took place, the biggest of which was the development of farming. Human cultures gradually abandoned their nomadic lifestyles and settled into small communities where they relied on cultivating land and breeding livestock.

Stronger than donkeys and faster than oxen, horses quickly became the indispensable physical force behind many new human activities: ploughing fields, grinding grain in the mill, as well as transporting both people and goods.  From the very first farms to the invention of the automobile, the omnipresence of the animal in our everyday life had a very deep impact on our society which remains today.  After all, don’t we still use horsepower to measure the output of a mechanical engine, long after the disappearance of horse-drawn carriages?