Horses and Humans: A Partnership Across Time

Five experts in diverse disciplines explore the history, art, and archaeology of the horse-human bond.

This program was presented at the Getty Villa and Online on Saturday, October 21, 2023, https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3966.html, and complements the exhibition “The Horse and Rider from Albania,” https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/horseman/.

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– Welcome everyone, both here and online, to our program today on the partnership of horses and humans. My name is Jens Daehner. I’m a curator in the antiquities department at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles, and I say in Los Angeles for our online audience, of course. We hope we have set the tone with horse jokes and quotes and the horse playlist — and that you noticed there was a horse playlist. Today’s theme was inspired by an exceptional small bronze in our exhibition, The Horse and Rider from Albania on view through January. Our five speakers today were chosen for their affection for horses as well as their different perspectives on horses across time and geography. Now, Carolyn Willekes introduces the big picture in her presentation on the history of horse-human relationship. Carolyn is assistant professor in the Department of General Education at Mount Royal University. Her research focuses on the relationship of horses and humans in antiquity and its influence on social and cultural identities. Carolyn is the author of "The Horse in the Ancient World: From Bucephalus to the Hippodrome," as well as research on ancient cavalry, equestrian sports, and horses in visual culture. Carolyn will also be our moderator at the end as we turn to the Q&A. Carol Mattusch takes us to ancient Greece and to Xenophon’s guide to good riding. Carol is Mathy Professor Emerita at George Mason University. She specializes in Greek and Roman bronzes and chairs the committee on the International Bronze Congress. So she brings a special expertise to our bronze horse. In addition to her many publications on bronzes, she has published on ancient Greek horsemanship in “Hippos: The Horse in Ancient Athens", and in "The Horse in Ancient Greek Art." With Sinclair Bell, we transition to the racehorse in the Roman world. Sinclair is professor of art history and presidential teaching professor at Northern Illinois University, and he has a special interest in Etruscan and Roman sport and spectacle. His publications on horses and chariot racing include chapters in the "Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life" and in the Wiley Blackwell "Companion to Sport and Spectacle." He has a monograph forthcoming on the social and cultural significance of Roman chariot races. Now, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the exhibition I mentioned, The Horse and Rider from Albania. Some of you may have had the chance to see it already, and if you haven’t, I urge you to check it out after the talk. It’s a small one room exhibition focusing on one particular discovery and its subsequent conservation treatment here at the Getty Villa Antiquities Conservation Laboratories. Now, this bronze horse was discovered five years ago in Albania and then came to us as a loan afterwards for treatment, cleaning, conservation, and analysis. Now here you actually see a photo of the horse taken within minutes, I would say, after it was discovered and the soil packed around it is still a little bit moist, you can see that. On the map, you see, more or less, the spot where it was found in central Albania, but close to the Adriatic coast, a village named Babunjë. And that is a place where an international team of archaeology has been excavating for several years. You see the place, to orient yourself, right across from the heel of the Italian boot. Now, on the photo on the right, you see that small hill that is the Greek settlement hill, an ancient Greek settlement in the Babunjë whose ancient name we don’t know, but we know there was a small settlement. And the discovery circumstances of the horse are somewhat peculiar because it happened while the excavators were there on a campaign, but it didn’t happen exactly in their excavation trench, but right outside of it, namely in an onion field that was plowed by a farmer who lives there and has his field on that ancient settlement hill. And that the archaeologist happened to be eyewitnesses when the plowing was taking place. And they actually observed the farmer and were able to be right there when this horse was brought up from a foot and a half deep out of the soil and then recovered it. And since then it has been with the Albanian Institute of Archaeology and it came to us a couple years later for treatment. And here you see our head of conservation, Susanne Gänsicke in the process of cleaning and stabilizing this exquisite small bronze. You get a good sense of how big or rather how small it is. It is a Greek work of about 500 BC, the very late Archaic period. And the hypothesis is that it came to this site in Albania with Greek settlers who started settling there in the landscape called Illyria earlier in the 6th century BC. And not to give too much away of this small exhibition, which I hope you go and check out and enjoy upstairs, the second floor of the villa. Here is a sort of side by side view of how that statue came here a couple of years ago and how it has been presented now. And you know, it’s not hard to see what an exquisite discovery, not only the horse in itself, but also the very slow discovery of what lied underneath all that dirt that was still packed on the bronze when it arrived here. Now, let’s get started with our speakers. And I’m asking Carolyn to please come up and get us started. Thank you so much. (audience clapping) – Alright, hi everyone. To all of you who are here in person and everyone attending online, thank you for joining us today to learn about my favorite thing, horses. I am legit, this is my baby horse, his name is Craterus. I’m a classics nerd. So he’s named after one of Alexander the Greats generals. Because why not? So although I’m a classicist, I mean the ancient Greek and Roman world is sort of my home. What I’m going to do today, and prepare yourself for horse puns: we’re going to charge, gallop, leap, whatever you want to call it, from pre-history to about the 1500s to set the scene for what you’re going to see with the more specialized, chronologically focused talks throughout the rest of the program. So what I want to do for you right now is sort of give you an idea of just how impressively, deeply woven within our history the horse-human bond is. Because if you go out there, I mean go out into the Getty and go look around and walk into every room, you’ll find horses, right? Look on any sort of artifact, any medium, any context, there will be a horse or an equid there somewhere. Ask me, when I was doing my PhD, I had to photograph all of them. There’s a lot. Especially when you find the Thracian horse cult room at the very end of a day in a museum and you’re hungry and you’re tired and it’s full of ponies. But… There we go. It’s hard to imagine a world without horses. I mean, even now in our sort of post-industrialization world, of we have mechanized everything, horses are everywhere. They are part of our actual language. There are so many terms of phrase in English that actually owe their origins to horsey things. When you say "I’m delivering a parting shot", right, the original mic drop, it’s a reference to the Parthians, these amazing horse archers who came from the grasslands of Iran and had this really sneaky thing of pretending to retreat and then spinning around backwards on their horses and shooting their bows over their horses’ hindquarters. It was a literal parting shot, we use that. Starting from scratch refers to the quarter horses and sort of the races in the frontier towns. So we have all of these things we say that reference horses even today, although we live in a world where most of us no longer depend on horses to survive. And because horses have come to be so prominent in our imagination, in our psyche, it’s easy to think that horses have always been part of who we are, that we have always used and depended on horses. And when you look back at the visual record, you’re tempted to follow this line of thought. So this is the very famous panel of horses in Chauvet Cave in the Ardèche region of France. These horses were painted about 35,000 years ago. To put this in context, these horses are not domesticated. When we look at the history of domesticated species of animals in our lives, horses are one of the last major domesticates, long after cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, cats are debatable. Did we domesticate them? I don’t know. Looking at the archaeology and there is some debate about whether there was a couple periods of domestication, but really horses are domesticated probably in the mid fourth millennium. So 3500s BCE. 35,000 years ago. That is tens of thousands of years before we domesticated horses. And not just in Chauvet, you look at the cave art, the rock art of what we call sort of the Upper Paleolithic, and you find horses everywhere. Horses appear more frequently than any other species of animal, but they’re not domesticated. And there’s huge questions as to what this art even represents. But what I want you to take away is we were putting ponies everywhere. We really, really liked them and we were going to a lot of effort to carve them and paint them in this very lifelike, vibrant way. And when we turned to domestication, it was a close thing for the horse. So again, it’s hard to imagine a world without horses, right? Even though now they are often like, you know, really fancy, expensive, you know, lawnmowers and our pets and our companions and athletes. The domestication of the horse was a turning point, in the fate, in the future of the horse. It has been argued that if we hadn’t domesticated horses, that the horse would have probably petered out, disappeared, maybe gone extinct. And this may sound extreme, but look at other species of non-domesticated equids. Some like the Quagga are extinct. The Somali Wild Ass a very endangered species. The Takhi or the Przewalski’s horse is an endangered species. It was extirpated in the wild in the 1960s, has since been reintroduced into Mongolia, into reserves. But most wild species of equids live in a precarious position. They are endangered, threatened, or they are gone. And even when we look at what we call our feral horses, so the descendants of domesticated horses like your mustangs, your brumbies, the wilds, that’s what we call them in Alberta, they have a contentious relationship with humans. We aren’t comfortable with wild horses, with feral horses. They don’t exist in our domestic sphere. They become an object of a lot of conflict. So the domestication of the horse quite literally changed the fate of this animal. But it also changed sort of the fate and history of humans as well. But to give you an idea of how recent, relatively recent our relationship with horses is and sort of the tangible usefulness of horses in our society, we can look at this. This is the Standard of Ur, it’s from the royal cemetery of Ur, so in the Middle East, dates to about 2500 BCE, it’s spectacular. If you get a chance to see it in the British Museum, definitely worth doing. So these are our first war animals, right? They’re pulling in these heavy war wagons. They’re not really chariots, I suppose. They are equids, but they’re not horses. This is around the period of time where we’re probably starting to see the domesticated horse making its way into the Middle East. So the horse is domesticated on the Eurasian Steppe and then kind of migrates around the world from there through different causes. This is a species of animal or a type of animal, it’s not a species. This is an animal that we call a kunga. So it’s a hybrid. It’s a cross between the domestic donkey and the wild ass, the onager. So the very first war animals, the first time humans turn to using animals in war, they’re not horses, they’re something different. They’re these hybrids. And even when horses emerge or come into the Middle East and start to be driven and start to be ridden in battle, there’s these debates around them. There is a famous letter from the king of a region called Mari, which is in Northern Syria I believe, and it’s sort of the early second millennium, it’s around 1800, 1700 BCE, and he actually writes to his advisors, he’s communicating with his advisors saying, "Would it be inappropriate for me to be seen riding a horse?” as opposed to working with one of these hybrids, right? So we think of the horse as being this elite status symbol, but it wasn’t always that because these other equids, donkeys and these onegars and these hybrids had existed in human society as a sort of domestic animal longer than the horse had. And when horses come into the Middle East, we see this really interesting thing with language because there weren’t horses there. And so they’re referred to in Sumerian as the ass from the mountain, right? The donkey from the mountain. And if we fast forward to this part of the world, again, when horses are brought here, and they reemerge here, the indigenous tribes, they didn’t have a name for horse, but they had names for lots of other things. So they called them things like big dog or elk dog. Because again, they’re trying to compare them to the animals that they know, which really speaks to the horse as an introduced species and the impressive way in which this animal moves around the world, because now you find them everywhere except Antarctica, not for want of trying. There was a polar expedition that tried to go to the South Pole with horses, it didn’t work, don’t use horses. And then Egypt, right? So the horses were introduced to Egypt again in the second millennium. And it’s during the New Kingdom period that you start to see this profusion of horses in the visual culture. And so this is from the tomb of a guy named Nebamun who was a fairly successful official, I think he was in charge of grain. And one of his scenes, he has this, we have two different chariots with two different kinds of equids. At the top, you see horses. And on the bottom, it’s a hybrid of some sort, whether this is onager or a mule. And what you are starting to see here is humans representing different ideas of the status as associated with equids. So on top we have these two horses, they’re harnessed to their chariot and they’re like, they are ready to go, right? Their chariots here, he’s getting in, he’s got the reins. There is a sense of preparation for forward motion. You’re not going to drop the reins, those horses will be gone, right? They are spirited and energetic and powerful, high status animals. You look at the two equids on the bottom and they’re like, "Hey, yeah, we’re just hanging out." You know, the charioteer is just sitting there, he’s not even looking at them. The reins are looped around the framework of the chariot. So we start to see here in the human mind is these different kinds of equids and what they represent, because that’s the thing about horses. There’s the ways in which they were actually useful. But then there’s the ways in which we as humans used equids to represent ourselves, our societies, our social structures, and all of that fun stuff that we like to complicate because we’re human. But my favorite thing to look at is horses being horses because people will look at horses and art from different periods and say, it’s idealization. You know, “tThey didn’t really,” ah, “can we look at this as an actual record of what horses were like? or whatever? Well, I don’t know, this is another relief. It’s from Amarna and someone commissioned a horse scratching his nose. If you look at the Parthenon Frieze, you know, the massive, very important temple in the center of Athens, there’s also a horse scratching its nose on the Parthenon Frieze. And horses scratch their noses. This is Mercury, one of the horses I worked with for a while, he’s a jousting horse and he loves scratching his nose. What I love about this one is like, oh, I can’t get the pointer to work? No, because I’m technologically cursed. But you can actually see his teeth out. He’s got his teeth out and he’s scratching an itch. And someone put this on a building that they paid for and commissioned. So we see these glimpses of an understanding of horsiness. Same thing here, I mean, the Assyrians, okay, they loved their violence. Like you walk into the British Museum and the rooms that have all of the Assyrian stuff from, you know, Nineveh and Nimrud, these imperial palaces, it is a lot of violence. I feel bad for like, you go in there with your kids and you’re trying to explain why there’s all of this massacre happening. I heard one dad tell his son, it was because they didn’t have TV back then. (audience laughing) I mean, for an off-the-cuff response, good on you, dad. But in the midst of all of this literal violence of animals and humans being killed and tortured, and it’s a lot, like HBO would be proud. We have this, the king’s camp and the horses having a little snack, having a drink at the end of the day next to what appears to be some giant machine and the groom brushing the horse, right? So even in these imperial propagandistic contexts, we still see humans and horses just being together. And of course the horse also became a status symbol. I mean the horse is still a status symbol. And so we wanted to make, I mean, I think horses are very pretty Even as they are, but we wanted to razzle dazzle them, bling them up a little bit. We could do a whole thing just on horse equipment. But these are some examples of horse bits, that’s what goes in their mouth. The cheek pieces on either side. So, this comes from a culture that we call the Luristanians in Iran. They are spectacular. Someone really wanted to make their horses look fancy. And yes, of course, this is a reflection of the humans who owned them, that you can afford this. But also, it’s saying something about the animal. And you’re not putting this on your donkey, right? You’re putting this on your horses. The status reflects something and the wanting to glorify the horse and the beauty of the horse is representative of what it meant to humans. Same thing with this bridle. So the leather is new because leather is an organic material so it disintegrates over time. I had the privilege of handling this piece. So it’s a bridle, it’s Etruscan, it is incredible. It is an absolute work of art. It’s bronze, so again, you see this spectacular looking bit that goes in the horse’s mouth, but the entirety of the bridal is covered in these little individual bronze pieces. There’s birds, there’s geometric objects. Someone wanted to put this on their horse. I mean, even if it’s a funerary context, like someone connected this with their horse, that means that animal means something. And then we get fun scenes. This is a kylix, it’s a big drinking cup in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s called Poseidon Stable. Poseidon was the Greek god of literally all things manly, right? Like bulls, earthquakes, horses. You see statues of him, he’s got like a 36 pack. Like, he was Mr. Masculine. And so, of course, as the god of horses, we have this really, I think just, I kind of want to call it adorable, but I feel like Poseidon would smite me for that, scene of his stable. And obviously there’s some fantastical elements to it. We have these little archer figures dancing around on the horses’ backs. But when you actually look at the horses themselves, there is an understanding of horses that is imbued within this pot. We have the horses over here, well, oh, it’s working now. who are like, “yeah, I like being brushed.” This guy, he’s getting a little face scratch, he’s clearly enjoying it. But if you know horses, you also know that some horses don’t enjoy being brushed. They’re twitchy and sensitive. And other horses are like, "This is what happens before we work, and so I’m anxious and I want to know I’m going to go do something." And that’s kind of what you’re seeing with this horse. He’s like, "Oh, I don’t want to stand still." So we’re seeing this sort of horsiness and awareness of what it is to be a horse and the fact that horses are individuals and they have different behavior coming through in this vase. I showed this vase in a talk I gave in Calgary on Wednesday night for the archaeological society. And later on during the question period, someone asked me about whether the Greeks only rode stallions or if they rode mares. And you know, we have this tendency to say stallions because we think of Greek society as being very, very sort of patriarchal, which it is, but that’s not really practical for war because it cuts out half of your horse population if you’re only riding the male horses. And I made a comment about the fact that the patriarchy’s not about horses, and I’m hoping that someone in here or online has seen the "Barbie" movie. And afterwards two of the organizers came up to me and like they said, they were almost killing themselves laughing when I was describing Poseidon and this scene. So like, it’s like Ken’s house, the mojo dojo casa house, but Poseidon’s stable, okay, there’s my pop culture reference. And let me go to a piece that is here in the Getty. I saw it in person yesterday, it is so cool. I love it. It’s Greek as well. It recounts the scene from the Trojan War when the Greek heroes, Odysseus and Diomedes go to steal some super duper fancy horses from the Thracian king. Horse thieving, it’s a thing. The poor unfortunate Thracians are very dead. But what I love about this again, is this glimpse of horsiness. Because it’s nighttime, horses are prey animals, they are afraid of a lot of things. They are hypersensitive to the world around them. And you can see these horses, they’re on both sides of this amphora are like what the heck is going on? They smell the blood, they probably hear the screams, the stuff, the violence, and they’re tethered and like, "What do we do?" And then these two strangers who speak a different language show up and are trying to steal them away. And so again, you see with what the artist is representing, even though this is a famous moment in the cycle of the Trojan War, an understanding of horse. But we also liked horses for things like spectacle. You know, we didn’t just stick them on our walls and put them on our pots. We did use them for different things as well. And the two primary uses for horses, especially in the ancient world and the early medieval world were sports and war. Not so much agriculture. It took us a while to figure out how to make a horse collar so we wouldn’t choke them when they were plowing. So this really does make them a status animal. They’re not doing practical day-to-day things. They’re not the most practical animals. You will see this again, Sinclair will talk about this in the whole Roman chariot racing thing in much more detail. But again, it gives us an idea of how popular and almost celebrity-like horses became. You know, now we name our horses, we know of famous horses like Seabiscuit and Secretariat and things like that. Same thing in the Roman world, right? They loved their chariot racing. They were literally bonkers for it. And this is a relatively mundane artifact. It’s a lamp, right? It’s how you lit your home. But we have all sorts of lamps with chariot scenes, with circus racing scenes on them. And I love this one because it’s not this the sort of adrenaline of the race itself, it’s a Roman racehorse with his fan club or her fan club, sort of surrounded by members of its group of its team. I think the idea is that this little sign had the name of the horse on it. So we see how horses become, especially individual celebrity horses, become woven into the fabric of social identity. And it’s not just a European, Mediterranean, thing. In today’s program we’re going to be going sort of west-ish, but if you go east, you also find the horse being introduced all over the place and becoming incredibly important. So I am not in any way, shape or form an expert in Tang Dynasty art, but I can tell you that this is beautiful. So Han Gan, the artist who made this horse, Night-Shining White, was one of the preeminent artists during this period. This horse was a charger, a warhorse of the emperor. And it is exquisitely drawn. You 100% get the sense of sort of frenetic power and energy that is coming out of this horse. But beside that, what I want to speak to you about is all of these seals, these seals represent over a thousand years of history. This image is being handed down and passed on from one generation to another, preserved and respected and honored because of this horse. And of course, the fact that it was a famous artist, it’s beautiful, but it’s of this horse. There isn’t even a person. The emperor is not on it, it’s just the horse. One of the other things that’s really cool about horses is the whole, I don’t want to say gender equality thing, but when you look at the horse in human history, one of the things that you see with the horse is that they are accessible to both men and women, males and females. And one of the sports that actually played a really big role in that was polo. So polo comes out of South Asia and spreads through Asia. It’s a very old sport, probably being played in the time of Alexander the Great, if not earlier. So in this particular scene, this particular manuscript image from Iran, the players are all male. Again, I mean exquisitely rendered and you can again, sense the energy of the event, but we do have other images, manuscript images, also statues from China, from India, of female polo players. So women were playing polo as well. And if you look at modern horse sport, jumping into the modern sphere, until fairly recently, the equestrian events at the Olympics were the only events where women and men competed against each other on a equal, level playing field. I think there’s now doubles curling. But basically prior to that, it was the equestrian sports, the horse as an equalizer regardless of the gender of the rider. And I want to finish with this. In part, because I have a soft spot for jousting. I trained jousting horses back in Calgary. It is indeed a thing. Yeah, it’s always fun when you go to the emergency room with a jousting accident, the nurses look at you like you’ve completely lost your marbles. This is a suit of armor for a horse. All of the various components. This is kind of trailing towards the end of sort of the big heyday of armored horses and lances on the battlefield. It is amazing. I mean, it is in and of itself an incredible work of art. Each individual piece is incised with details, symbols, mythological elements, and this foliage and it completely covers the horse, from the chamfron on his face, and I like that he’s been made into a little unicorn. That’s a whole other topic we could just fall into. The detail is amazing. And I want to finish with the warhorse because I think it’s a topic that really encapsulates the complexity of our relationship with the horse. I mean, I’ve been waxy and poetic about, “Oh, we love ’em,” and “Look, they’re being horses in the arts and we put fancy things on them,” but we did expect them to do things. And as a modern scholar and horse lover, looking back on the past, some of those things can be difficult to come to terms with. Riding horses into war — did horses die? Yes. Using horses in sport — do they get injured? Do they die? Yes, I mean, that still happens today. Was every horse honored and loved and cherished and spoiled? No, but neither was every person. Humans, we’re a complicated species. But I think this armor, this set really shows that collision between honoring the horse, respecting the horse, recognizing what the horse is, and probably recognizing that asking a horse to go to war is one of the wackiest ideas we have ever come up with. They run away from everything. I’ve had horses run away from their own toots before, like they fart and they run and you’re like, "It was you," but now I’m going to ride you to war. Here we go. Training a war horse was a huge, not just financial commitment, but an emotional commitment. There had to be a degree of trust. Who in their right mind would want to ride a strange horse to war or ask a strange horses to do anything that your life depends upon? And so what we see here is this need to, yes, we ride horses into war because that’s what we use horses for, but we also want to protect them to the greatest degree that we can. And we want to celebrate them by not just putting whatever on them, but putting the spectacular stuff on them. So to finish, before I hand the mic over, this is something I always tell kids when I teach kids programs, I have a favor for everyone. The next time you see a horse, I want you to say thank you to them because we owe these animals a lot. I know we live in a world where many of us maybe don’t ever really see a horse in the flesh, but to get to where we are today, as you will discover, has depended intimately and deeply upon the fact that these animals chose to accept us because you can’t make a horse do anything, like you really can’t. And again, would you trust them if you had to? So we’ve built this partnership, this deep, emotional, necessary partnership and yeah, we owe ’em a lot. Thank you very much. (audience clapping) – Thank you to the Getty, to Jens, to Lisa, Shelby, and everyone who made this conference possible. I should begin by saying that I took riding lessons at Patty’s Riding School in Burke, Virginia when I was six. And you can see here I’m riding Black Magic who was just the most fabulous pony I’ve ever seen, amazing. Then I got my first horse when I was seven and I thought she could win the Kentucky Derby. I was sure of it. When I was nine, this is Pat Smythe by the way. When I was nine, I spent the summer with my parents in England where I insisted that we spend an entire week at the Royal International Horse Show at White City in London. My parents were not horse people. As a graduate student at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, I rode on the rocky trails of Mount Parnes. But I never thought to write about horses until the 2017 exhibition in Richmond and Middleburg, Virginia, "The Horse in Ancient Greek Art." It was curated by Peter Schertz and Nicole Stribling. Horses figure prominently in myths. Pegasus, we all know Pegasus, the winged horse born from the blood of the Gorgon, Medusa when Perseus cut her throat. Bellerophon tamed Pegasus, but when he wanted that horse to carry him up Mount Olympus, the home of gods, the horse threw him. The first centaur was the son of a Thessalian named Ixion and a cloud, and he fathered more centaurs from Thessalian mares. In historical times, Thessaly was known for its horses where there was good pasture land. Thessaly and other city states put images of their horses on their coinage. And a horse from Thessaly won the first horse race at Olympia in 648 BC. And in Thrace, Diomedes owned a team of fire breathing mares who ate human flesh. Herakcles in his eighth labor captured all four of these mares with one halter, he must have had four ropes, and dragged them out of the stable. The uproar brought Diomedes on the run. Heracles felled him with his club and the mares ate him. After feeding, the mares followed Heracles quietly away and didn’t cause any more trouble. Alexander the Great’s stallion, Bucephalus, meaning “bullheaded”, was said to be descended from these mares. But mares don’t figure in warfare. Mares are much more important in breeding. Amazons do however figure in warfare. Lucius wrote that, "the Amazons, daughters of Aries who lived by the Black Sea, were the first of all to ride horses." The Greeks believed that Scythian women were warriors, riders, archers. They fought alongside men fearlessly, aggressively, and skillfully. The actual Scythians, nomads living to the north of the Black Sea, had saddles by the 7th century BC, but no stirrups. Their bits like this one were simple jointed snaffles. Their horses were small, probably ponies under 14.2 hands or 56 inches tall at the withers, that is the top of the shoulder. Each hand is four inches. That is by today’s measure. If you look at the Parthenon, the riding horses that we see in Greek art are also small and compact. They usually carry youths and men in procession, boys in races, and men hunting. They ride bareback with only bridles, reigns in one hand, whip in the other. And now we get to this wonderful Albanian horse and rider. What we see here is a bareback rider preparing to throw a spear. A baldric with a sheathed dagger at his side, no saddle, no stirrups. He looks large for his horse. The horse is a stallion, snaffle bridle on his large head, braided forelock, short, thick neck, roached mane, rather long and bristly, a nicely slanted shoulder. Short back, well-rounded hind quarters, a long braided tail, which is particularly beautiful to look at. And slender legs, the hind legs bent, the tail vertical. He is not moving at this moment. He may be about to move. In 2016, a necropolis, dating from the eighth to the fifth centuries in Phaleron, one of the ports of Athens, yielded 1500 human skeletons and 14 equids. At least 13 of the equids are male and all but one of them are between three and a half and six years old according to Flint Dibble, who has worked with these skeletons. So three and a half to six years horse years would be 21 to 26 human years, one was a couple years older. Their height at the top of the shoulder, at the withers ranged from 12.2 hands or 50 inches to 13.3 hands, 55 inches. Today the cutoff point between horses and ponies is 14.2 hands or 58 inches. So these horses were definitely ponies by today’s standards. But the Norwegian Fjord, although a pony to us is known as the Fjord horse, not pony. The Albanian horse falls within this range. The Kikkuli Text written in Hittite around 1350 BC is a manual about training and caring for chariot horses. After that, Simon in the 6th century, followed by Xenophon in the 5th to the 4th centuries, both Athenians, were evidently the first and only writers on horsemanship in Europe before the 16th century. Simon’s work doesn’t survive, but Xenophon’s does. If we look at this little Albanian again. Xenophon was an historian, a military leader, and a great strategist. His book on horsemanship is a manual for young aristocrats training for the cavalry. It’s about buying, stabling, grooming, riding, training, and hunting. I won’t cover all of those topics. The cavalry and their horses had to shield the infantry, find the enemy, skirmish, harass, and pursue their foes. They also presented magnificent displays during the Panathenaea Festival in Athens. Xenophon’s advice on all these many topics is clear, to the point, and it’s driven by common sense in his day and in ours as well. The first of many English translations of Xenophon’s on horsemanship came out in London in 1771. Let’s just have a look at some of his advice. He says that, If as you’re buying a horse, “the legs should be widely set to provide a strong base, the knees supple, the chest not too narrow, not too broad. The back should be short. The shoulder, large and broad. The hocks, the hind legs, knees set back. Muscles along the back should give the rider a soft seat. Broad, deep chest, supple loin, broad, strong hindquarters and a small flank." He recommends all of these. "These make it easier for a horse to lift his forehand and get his hind quarters under him. And broad muscular hind quarters also give agility and speed. The horse’s tail", he says, "should be thick at the base and long and it’s best when it’s held high." Xenophon likes a high pole, top of the head, "with good flexion, a rather delicate head and jaws also delicate, small ears, a small cheek, flat nose, wide nostrils, small teeth. The eyes should be large, Prominent, and bright." And the eyes on this little Albanian horse are just amazingly large, prominent, and bright. "Check the teeth, see that the horse accepts the bit and the bridle readily and is easy to mount. Does he have a soft mouth? Does he bend his body easily in both directions? Can he run, stop, and turn quickly?" "Avoid a horse," he says, "that is vicious towards other horses or towards men. And also avoid one that kicks." He goes on, "too spirited a horse doesn’t make a good war horse, he must obey you. “At the same time, be sure to use a muzzle on your stallion when you’re leading him without a bridle so he won’t bite you." Bronze muzzles that have survived from antiquity confirm this point nicely. The Greeks didn’t geld their horses and stallions do tend to bite. "Your groom should gentle the horse, make him easy to handle, lead him through crowds and accustom him to all kinds of sights and sounds. If a colt shies, patiently show him not to be afraid." That’s very good advice, which Xenophon later reinforces saying, "Never get mad at a horse. Be patient if he’s afraid of something. Hitting a horse only makes things worse." Very good points. Greek horses weren’t shod. Xenophon says, "Fill the paddock with round stones, about the size of a fist to prepare your horse to walk on hard ground. And you can make a little mound of them and get him to stand on them as well." I’m not so sure about that. Jointed snaffle bits were widely used in classical Greece, but they were a whole lot tougher than what we see today. The Greeks were not taking any chances with their war horses. Xenophon says, "Train the horse with a rough bit with discs and spikes so the horse will not take the bit in his teeth." At which point you lose control. "Once he’s used to a rough bit, he should behave just as well in the smooth snaffle bit." Like the one, the Scythian snaffle or the modern snaffle at the right. "If he doesn’t, add discs to a smooth bit." In the bronze, we see a typical Greek bridle and bit, but the reigns are missing. As you can see here, he has his left hand right at the top of the mane and you can see that it was holding something, probably the reigns. I show you here myself, bridling, Juniper, my second horse. Xenophon could be teaching a modern class. "Bridle him from the near side, the left side. First put the reins over his head, then with the crown piece in your right hand, hold the bit in your left hand and put it in his mouth while inserting your left thumb between the bars at the side of his mouth. Finally put the crown piece in place." Here you can see I’m having a whole lot of trouble with Juniper. And when I got Juniper and I started out like this, my mother came outside and she said, "Do you mean to tell me you don’t know how to bridle a horse?" I said, "I do, I do, just I forgot, I’m just trying to remember." (audience laughing) It was awfully embarrassing. "A groom can teach the horse to kneel for you to get on" says Xenophon, "and he should also know how to give you a leg up. But you still need to know how to vault onto your horse. Mount again on the near side, the left side with a lead rope attached to the bridle so as not to jerk on the bit. Either grab the mane behind the ears or use your spear to vault on. Don’t knee the horse in the back, but bring your leg all the way over." You should also learn to vault on from the far side, the right side because the left side may not always be available. Remember again, there were no stirrups. This is another good reason to ride a shorter horse, say 13 to 14 hands. And remember, the rider was wearing armor as he vaulted on. This little bronze rider is wearing what looks like a metal corselet with leather lappets at the hem. Xenophon says, "Once you get on, keep your legs under you, grip with your thighs and let your lower legs hang. Keep your upper body supple. After mounting, sit still and make your horse stand still until you ask him to walk." There’s nothing worse than a horse that’s just fretting and wants to start off and you’re not ready for him to do that. "Don’t let him fidget." Xenophon says, "If your horse likes to go fast though, keep him within limits." Xenophon also cautions that “in battle, a shy horse might throw his rider and leave the rider in a very difficult situation. Avoid shy horses, lazy ones, and those with hard mouths. The trumpet or the call to battle should not alarm your horse. Teach your horse to go on a loose reign, neck up, and flexed at the pole. This is how he goes on his own when he is having a good time or when he wants to impress other horses, especially mares. He will learn to carry his head high on a loose reign." For cavalry training, Xenophon explains how to get your horse supple by working in a figure eight pattern. "Be sure that he can stop, turn, and run. You will need these maneuvers in battle," he says. "Your horse needs to be brave. He is your transport in battle. Teach him to gallop uphill and down and along a slope. Jump over an obstacle. Jump out, jump down, run through water. Take hold of the mane so as not to pull on the bit. Hunting is good practice and it keeps your seat firm. Above all, your horse must be fearless and sound." Xenophon says, "not all horses have the spirit and the strength for advanced work. They must be supple and short-backed,” like the little Albanian horse, “with strong loins and flank. When your horse brings his hind legs under him, pull him up with the bit so that he bends and balances on his hocks,” his hind legs, knees, “and lifts his forehand. Then give him his head so that he thinks he’s doing this of his own accord. This will help you use your weapons in all sorts of terrain and all kinds of situations." Xenophon’s describing, I Think, a form of pesade, a highly collected and rhythmic cantor, which the horse is barely moving, and from which the horse can make a half turn or a circle. These are good moves in battle. What Xenophon expects of the best war horses is retained in modern dressage. “Advanced training reflects natural instincts. The horses enjoy their work and they are taught with patience. Plus they are congratulated for having done well.” At which point Xenophon says, "Stop work immediately, the horse has done the right thing and congratulate him." This bronze statuette from Herculaneum shows Alexander the Great in battle. The sword is missing from his right hand, but the sheath is belted in place beneath the left arm. He held the reigns in his left hand. Bucephalus has gathered his hind legs beneath him and his hocks are low to the ground in the pesade. Xenophon explains how to do it and we can see in the Parthenon Frieze, the results of this training for the Athenian cavalry. Xenophon lets us look at these horses and riders with new eyes and with an appreciation of the training that is required of both horse and rider. The very naturalistic Albanian horse is not moving, don’t be misled by the length of his mane. It is a roached mane, I believe. It’s not flying, but it’s a bristly mane, thick, bristly, roached at a length that stands up. He is or was balancing on his hind legs like the leg on the left from the Athenian Agora, all that’s left of a life size equestrian group. The little horse’s braided tail hangs straight down. Is he about to raise his forelegs in a pesade or is he about to spring into a stylized gallop like the horseman in the vessel attachment at the right? This is not a stylized horse, however. What exactly is going on? Thank you very much. (audience clapping) – My thanks to everyone at the Getty for organizing this, Lisa and Shelby in particular, and also to all of the staff. If we look good today, it’s because of people who are behind the scenes up there doing all of the work. So thank you to everyone. Sometime in the late 1st or early 2nd century CE, a Roman citizen named Lucius Avillius Dionysius passed away, leaving his wife Claudia with a solemn task and responsibility of honoring his memory. So she did what every good wife in Imperial Rome did, at least those who had the resources, she ordered a funerary monument in stone. On the one hand, her deceased husband was a pretty regular chap, his cognomen or last name, if you will, Dionysius was a popular choice amongst freed persons in Rome and serves here to corroborate his formerly servile status, especially in light of his profession. That profession is listed on his tombstone as a conditor of the red faction. Conditor has been the source of some scholarly confusion and debate. Variously translated as a storekeeper, a founder, or, most likely, groom. And that takes us to the other hand of his story. Because even though Dionysius was not himself rich or famous, he worked with two personalities who were very much both. Their names were Aquilo Niger Canus, son of Aquilo, and Herpinus Niger, son of Aquilo. They were racehorses. Now, I like Dionysius’s wife Claudia very much because while we know almost nothing about her. The monument she chose for her husband displays her canny instincts for not just honoring, but also preserving his memory for perpetuity. That is rather than commemorate her husband with a stock image of the kind we’ll see at the end of the talk. Claudia went the extra mile and she commissioned something utterly unique in Roman funerary art On the front, her deceased husband stands positioned between two horses, each of which has its left foreleg raised and is identified by an inscription above it. And so we have on the left, Aquilo Niger Canus, son of Aquilo won 130 times, came in second 88 times, and came in third, 37 times. On the right, Hirpinus Niger, son of Aquilo won 114 times, came in second 56 times, and third 36 times. The horses are stocky and compressed and the deceased is dressed in a short tunic. And he holds a staff in his right hand and a feed bag for the horses in his left hand. While the long forward combed locks on his head are all that are preserved, the deceased portrait’s features are otherwise obliterated. However, they’re fortunately represented in the legendary sketchbook of Cassiano dal Pozzo. And that’s what you see here. And this sketch is the earliest record of this monument from 1521. The names of both horses suggest they had dark colored manes. Studies of equine onomastics show that both are well attested and some of these as we’ll see, are so popular, in fact that they also appear on lamps and other kinds of objects. Now these horses are especially distinguished by the fact that each had accumulated more than 100 victories, putting them in the exclusive circle of what the Romans called the Centenarii. Such rankings and associated betting and visual commemoration and mass media fueled Rome’s hippomania, making many racehorses into stars equal to their drivers. Herpinus was one of these stars. He’s recorded by two major poets of the period, Martial and Juvenal, who celebrate him 25 years apart. Dionysius or his wife exploited these associations with fame by aping the designs of the tombs of charioteers and racehorses. The typical format of the former of a charioteer tomb can be seen on this early first century tombstone of a charioteer Scirtus who was a slave from Rome. And this is laid out in a scorecard design, listing the race’s names and the charioteer’s rankings. The first century tombstone — so that’s just a detail, you can kind of get a sense of the similarity — where you get the horses’ scores on the left and then the charioteer on the right. And here the first century tombstone of the race racehorse Aegyptos — this is found at Padova — depicts the deceased horse in a lunette with its right foreleg raised. And so similarly, we see this kind of design on the monument of Dionysius. So the end product on the left is the only known example of a tombstone commissioned by a member of a circus faction that is nearly entirely rooted in quotations, not from his own performances on the racetrack, but from the careers and the fame of racehorses. For even though Dionysius was closely associated with the horses in this legendary faction at Rome, he was deprived access to the type of public recognition that the stable’s charioteers received as their drivers. As the monument’s commissioner, Dionysius’s wife seems to have felt that the horses’ successes were also her husband’s successes. By invoking the two most successful amongst them, this monument grants her late husband some share of their fame and luster. So from the ancient Olympics to the modern film "Benhur" and even its remake, which I don’t think anyone has seen recently, horse racing has proven a potent and enduring symbol of the agonistic culture of classical antiquity. Similarities did exist between the two cultures where equestrianism of all forms due to the expenses involved, had aristocratic overtones for the Romans as it did for the Greeks. But in contrast to the Greeks’ equal passion for mounted races and chariot racing, Romans strongly favored the latter. Indeed, chariot races were the earliest, the most popular, and the longest lived of all forms of spectacles in the Roman world. Just to remind you of the zone that we’re looking at here, evidence comes from the first and second centuries mostly. Chariot races were customarily held in a circus, which was a monumental arena that took the form of an elongated horseshoe. And so you see this beautiful painting that’s now at the Art Institute, and this quote from Tacitus talking, for better or for worse, about the different passions that consumed the Romans. And here, lamentably with titles in German, you can see the different spaces. And this should just give you a sense of the scale that as much as we get excited about the scale of the Colosseum, that the Circus Maximus was on a whole other level. So it was the oldest, largest, and most famous of all the circus arenas. And as the site of the legendary Rape of the Sabine women, the Circus Maximus was intertwined with the legendary foundation of Rome itself. At its most fully developed stage, which was under the Emperor Trajan, who you see here, the Circus Maximus measured approximately 580 meters long and 140 meters wide. The venue would’ve accommodated approximately 150,000 people. Though it may have seated as many as 250,000., 1267 01:03:08,730 –> 01:03:13,568 so even bigger than the University of Michigan stadium. (audience laughing) Sorry, my father went to Ohio State. (audience laughing) So, here we can see a reconstruction that was recently produced of this, which I think gives you a sense of the majesty and the scale. The architectural form of the Circus Maximus served as the prototype for satellite arenas elsewhere in Italy and around the Mediterranean with most but not all built after this Trajanic remodeling that you see. Among these, more than 50 circuses are now known, the majority being found in the regions where horse breeding was already well established. First, Italy, second, North Africa, and third, Spain. In North Africa, we know that there were at least 16 circuses. We have found eight archaeologically. In Spain, we know that there were at least 19 and we have found 12 archaeologically. The evidence from other parts of the empire remains patchier, although circuses are found in most of the major cities, especially the capitals of the provinces, including the east, west, and northwest, so in the East, for example, Antioch, in the west, Trier, in the northwest, a recently-ish discovered circus at Colchester. This is a reconstruction done by the Germans not too long ago at Trier. And one of the things that I like about this is it gives you a sense of the monumental scale. And one of the things that we hear about in Roman literary sources is just the noise. That whether you wanted to be, whether you were in the circus or not, you had to suffer the consequences of the competition. This gives you a sense of what we’re talking about. They’re very poorly preserved nowadays, and so we never get a sense of what they actually look like, but they were enormous. The number of races on any given day Would have varied over time and location based upon a number of factors, including the occasion for the games and also the wherewithal of the game sponsor. How much was he going to spend? However, a record from mid-4th century Rome indicates there were approximately 24 chariot races on a game day and some 66 days of games in a calendar year. So, lots of days off. While the exact frequency of the games across the duration of the empire can’t be established, it’s clear that staging the races required the support of a complex infrastructure. The enormous burden of their cost and organization fell upon the four racing teams or the factions as they were called, that served as contractors. It’s important to note here that where in the Greek world, the horses and the charioteers and jockeys were a symbol of the owner’s prestige, in the Roman world, the charioteers and their horses were the very public face of the business that was the racing faction. Like the charioteers with whom they competed, racehorses became popular idols and their breeding, their training, their medical treatment, their names, and their alleged magical properties are all well-documented by diverse sources. And we have those sources in the form of literary texts, inscriptions like we’ve seen, and visual representations. Modern estimates suggest that a single day of games required on the order of 700 to 800 horses. And that this demand combined with the need to supply horses to the Roman cavalry as well contributed to the rise of an extensive animal trade across the Mediterranean. Both wealthy private and imperial stud farms raised and trained stock for the track in Spain, Sicily, Thessaly, north Africa, and Cappadocia. And their brand marks were clearly visible on horses’ flanks, including the names, and perhaps also icons of the stables themselves as we’ll see in a moment. Roman authors appear to document a preference for African, that is, in particular, Libyan, bloodlines, in the early empire, and then to prefer Spanish and Cappadocian as well as Sicilian bloodlines in the later empire. The preference in the early empire for African horses, which are widely singled out for their speed and for their endurance, is further suggested by the inscriptions of charioteers who raced with them. And so charioteers in their funerary memorials are very careful to specify that they raced with African horses, for example, one of them who mentions that he raced exclusively with African horses and won 1000 victories. Racehorses were also selected according to age and sex and physique, disposition, which we’ve heard about, stamina, and dexterity. The majority were stallions, though the names of a few mares do exist. Skeletal evidence, what little we have, suggests that the average racehorse was of stocky build and stood approximately 135 to 155 centimeters high. This makes them comparable to a large pony in modern terms, but they would’ve been considered large animals to be sure during this period. This is a reconstruction of of a film that Carolyn and I, a documentary Carolyn and I actually worked on together. I can’t cover all the bases today, but if you do want to learn more, this is a shameless plug, I’m sorry. This was two years of research that went into this. I don’t know if you know the Smithsonian, but the standard is that every single sentence which is uttered in a Smithsonian documentary has to have two sources. So very rigorous. There are no ancient aliens in this. (audience laughing) And it’s a wonderful thing. I don’t know if Carolyn experienced this,, I put two years of research in, I poured PhD research into this, and then my spouse looked this up when it premiered on Amazon and he said, "So all of that research, and you can get your show, you can buy the whole thing fora dollar 99." (audience laughing) $2.99 in HD, if you want to splurge. But check that out for further details. And this is just to show you an example of the attention, that kind of loving detail, which is being spent on these different breeds. And you also see the colors of the different factions. It’s a wonderful mosaic in Rome. Pliny notes that, “a different build is required for the circus, and consequently though horses may be broken as two year olds to other service, racing in the circus does not claim them before age five.” These horses underwent thorough programs of exercise and training. Since quote, "Racers and chargers are both a job to breed for either its youth, mettle, and pace that trainers first demand." This training took place first on the stud farms themselves and then later at facilities, which would’ve been closer to the tracks. So for example, the trigarium, as it was called in the campus marshes in Rome. The best horses might race until 20 years old, or at least that is what we are led to believe. Depending on its suitability, a horse bread for racing would assume one of two positions within a chariot team either harnessed on the inside, the ugales, or attached to the center paired by a reign, not yoked, funales. The experienced lead horse on the inside left side of the chariot was the most important in the team since it guided the team around the sharp treacherous terms of the metae. The metae are those turning posts that you see on the right, those conical turning posts. Because of their pivotal role in the races, the names of these introugi serve not only on inscriptions for charioteers and also faction personnel, but they even surface in the wider material culture of the empire. These specific kinds of horses are praised in graffiti, in the epigrams of Martial, and they show up on funerary monuments too. And even in curse tablets, that is people who are going after these horses know what horse to go after in particular. In addition to the stress of the turns, a horse’s stamina was tested by the length of the course, which at around five kilometers was considerably longer than most of the most significant flat races, such as the Kentucky Derby of two kilometers and by repeated races on the same day. So they were really put through a lot. And this is one scholar’s attempt to kind of reconstruct the process of the race, which I don’t have time to go through today. Racehorses thus endured remarkable trauma and stress over the careers and literary sources provide insights into their ailments and to their care. The most important of these is Pelagonius’ “The Veterinary Art”, commentaries that were written in the 4th century CE and that were probably intended for wealthy Roman horse owners or horse breeders. Some of the topics he discusses include leg injuries such as concussions sustained from the constant pounding on the hard packed track, or calcified growths caused by blows from axles or wheels to the hooves, joint and tendon stress in the legs and the back, and shoulder injuries resulting from sudden high-speed turns. And also eye injuries such as blows or scarring from whips or inflammation probably from the sandy racecourse. The analysis of horse bones from contexts associated with circus arenas remains for example, Sirmium, shows evidence of these kinds of maladies, in particular osteo-pathological trauma, which is detectable at a couple of sites. Beyond the wealth of technical information that these commentaries provide about medical practice, they exhibit a genuine appreciation and sympathy for their subject that’s consistent with the tone and approach of other veterinarian treatises. This is a very expensive cup that was found in Austria a couple decades ago, and it just shows you the level of investment that some Romans would spend on articles commemorating this. But you see on the right, the kind of horrible tragedy that occurred with these accidents. We focus so much on the charioteers, but it’s very clear that because there are these accidents that are always, that are constantly represented, that the Romans were not unlike the NASCAR audiences. They were going there and the expectation of seeing some gruesome things. The Romans devotion to horses can also be seen in their names, which evoke them as living personalities. Nearly 600 horses’ names survive from disparate sources, which include literary texts, inscriptions for charioteers, and a wide variety of inscribed objects and monuments. And that includes knife handles, curse tablets, mosaics. And then also you can see this very cool recent reconstruction of the largest mall in antiquity as the archaeologist called it, these are the shops that are connected to the Circus Maximus that they’ve done a lot of work on reconstructing recently. And you can see on the left, Numitor. So these names, these 600names can be organized into six categories, which I’m going to rank in decreasing order of frequency. First, skill, and there are subcategories like speed. So Celer, swift. strength, Adamos, which would be cast iron. Agility, Passerinus, which is sparrow. The second category is appearance with an emphasis on color. So Aureus, golden. Or on particular markings like Maculosus, which means speckled. beauty, Elegans. size, Adauptos which means bulky or movement or other kinds of physical traits to do with their manes. Third category origin, including their divine descent like Pegasus, the owner’s names, their sire, their ethnic extraction. We saw Aegyptos earlier from Egypt. The fourth category is expectations such as victory, Victor, or good fortune, Felix. Fifth, their behavior ranging from docility, Volens, meaning willing or impetuousness, Temerarius, meaning hothead. And finally, expressions of affection such as Adamatus, meaning much beloved. Some names overlap these kinds of categories. We have, for instance, Parabolus, flamethrower, that could refer to the horse’s manner or its speed because fire is both ravaging and it’s also very fast. Unlike the harsh treatment that some animals endured in other spectacles, many horses became beloved celebrities in their own right. Immortalized, as we saw, in artistic representations and literature, the poet Martial noted dryly, “Martial is known to the nations and to the people. Why do you envy me? I’m no more famous than Andraemo the horse." And we already saw two such horses celebrated. This kind of hippomania could be found at all levels of Roman society, from commoners to its political pinnacle. The emperors Caligula and Lucius Verus allegedly spoiled their favorite horses, Incitatus and Volucer with lavish stables, blankets, and foodstuffs. While some high-minded Romans claimed disinterest in the races, Lucian noted that many had succumbed. And this is just to give you a quick example of the range of material culture that was generated. This is found,now, in London, and was found in the Tiber River. This gives you a sample, we’ve seen one of these already, of the kinds of things in which we have horses featured prominently. Lucian notes that "The craze for horses is really great, you know, and men with a name for earnestness have caught it in great numbers." For the urban mob, horse racing was said to have been an all consuming passion in which race goers reveled in their passions. And so here we can see how things have probably not changed so much over the time. "The favorite among all amusements from sunrise until evening, in sunshine and in rain, they stand open mouthed, examining minutely the good points or the defects of charioteers and their horses." Even Ovidthe poet Ovid, that archetypal dirty old man of antiquity, counseled his male readers to pick up attractive female spectators at the races. Since the circus held out the promise of a chance, romantic meeting, romantic encounter, that sexually segregated seating at the amphitheater prohibited. “Nor let the contest of noble steeds escape you. The spacious circus holds out many opportunities." Fans were knowledgeable of horses’ bloodlines, of their ethnic provenance and much else, but all that seemingly mattered in the end was these fans’ thirst for victory. "The horse we most admire is the one that romps home a winner, cheered on by the seething roar of the crowd. Good breeding doesn’t depend upon a fancy pasturage; the thoroughbred earns his title by getting ahead of the field by making them all eat his dust. But lack of victories means that the auction-ring will claim him, even the one from the flock of Coryphaeus and the posterity of her Hirpinus." Superstition hung heavily over the races and spectators went to extremes to secure their precious victories for their chosen horses. A Roman physician relates how some enthusiasts smelled the dung of their favorite horses to evaluate their health and to forecast the outcome of their races. Some horses were decked out with ornaments that were thought to aid their performance. And just briefly, this is an example of a Roman curse tablet, and these are extremely explicit and extremely detailed. They don’t just go after the charioteers, they definitely go after these lead horses as well. And these are almost like small little novellas on different kinds of usually lead tablets, and then they’re buried in a cemetery or a circus. And they’re very specific and very gruesome in terms of what they’re asking for. We have examples of, you know, what people thought would assist. And were told, for example, that "Wolf teeth hung around a horse’s neck would make it race faster." Other items such as Crescent-shaped amulets and bronze bells were used as amulets against the threat of envy and also of the evil eye. Such bullae and other neckwear were therefore not merely decorative, but were employed as talismans against witchcraft attacks. Since some spectators attempted to influence the outcome of the races by casting spells on drivers, or in some cases exclusively on ill-omened horses. This is a really interesting image because if you look at the horses themselves, around their necks, you’re going to see this combination of various kinds of ornamental decoration or detail. So clearly these things are not just showing up in the literary sources. This is to give you a sense too of the scale of some of these representations. This is a tomb for a charioteer. This is now hidden away in the Capitoline Museum’s garden. But it’s a remarkable monument and it has not just the names of, you know, the charioteer that it was commemorating — and it’s a monumental tomb. But also you’ll note in the upper right that it inscribes the names of the particular horses that this charioteer campaigned with. So this is just to give you a pandemic shot of scale. We’re talking a very, very large, expensive monument. There’s nothing like this elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Some racehorses met a kinder fate than the auction-ring or accidents on the racetrack and they were put out to pasture and their lives and deaths might even be commemorated through tombstones, especially those which were famous like the Aegyptos that we saw at the start. Another, though different, idea of this is captured by the grave altar of Titus Flavius Abascantus. These images and inscribed names demonstrate how the calculus of some human memorials depended as much, if not more on the fame of racehorses that they orbited than the humdrum accomplishments of the deceased themselves. And so what I mean is this guy was really kind of a forgettable nobody, he was a civil servant and he was a kind of mid ranking civil servant. And what you see in his image on the left is he’s represented at a funerary banquet, in eternity, you know, kind of enjoying life. But the reason we’re talking about his monument now 2000 years later is because of this representation that you see below. His wife decided to commission this representation of the most famous charioteer ever, Flavius Scorpus. But you’ll notice the way in which also included — so we have his name — are the names of the horses too. So it wasn’t just that the charioteer mattered, it was also that the horses were key to understanding this, to perpetuating his memory into eternity. The arrival of Christianity doesn’t fundamentally alter this calculus. What’s clear is that for many Romans, even those living under the growing influence of Christianity in the 4th century, chariot races were still tantamount to a religion. The Circus Maximus was still their temple and charioteers and racehorses were their gods. Indeed racehorses continued to be named after pagan gods even as one early church father lamented that, "the people of Rome could name the star racehorses of the day, but they couldn’t name the number of apostles." (audience laughing) And so this just gives you an example of the way in which you have these images of racehorses used in a kind of Christianized way. Finally, though we don’t have many, some funerary monuments are dedicated to racehorses themselves and can include affecting epitaphs, such as a relief that you see the text of here. It’s broken off, but it says essentially, "such a horse, neither . . . (this or that . . .) and Corporus would have produced, nor the Tuscan valleys nor the Sicilian pastures. You who were accustomed to outrunning the roaming birds and defeating the blasts of the North-Easterlies now have your stable in this tomb." The desire to humanize racehorses in this way, commemorating at once their personal qualities and their agonistic achievements through words and stone is a reminder that Romans’ engagement with animals could be more complex, even more humane than is often appreciated. Racehorses impacted human lives in diverse ways and thus, together with other animals, are as essential to the history of human culture as humans are. Racehorses accordingly deserve a distinct place of their own in the history of Rome’s oldest and most venerable form of athletic competition, thank you. (audience clapping) – Now we are starting to travel from Europe to the Americas. Kathryn Renton presents Horses In Conquest and Colonization from Medieval Spain to Latin America. Kathryn is a historian and a communication specialist at the Getty Research Institute. She co-founded the Equine History Collective and she studies the ways animals contributed to historical change in the early modern world. In her forthcoming book, "Feral Empire: Horse and Human in the Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World," Kathryn examines how horses ultimately challenged Spanish control during early colonization in Latin America. Our final speaker will be William Taylor on Changing Perspectives from Archaeological Science. William is assistant professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Colorado Boulder. In his field research, he explores the horse in society in East Asia and the introduction of domestic horses into the Americas. A new publication in science provides new information about the spread of horses, and he has a forthcoming book titled "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History." Please, Kathryn. (audience clapping) – Good afternoon, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here and it’s a luxury to spend the day talking about horses. So, thank you to the Getty. And you are also now a part of the privileged few. Once you start looking, you will see them everywhere. In histories of conquest and colonization, we find horses on all sides, in the invading nomadic armies, as the symbol of political leaders, and in the networks and alliances fueling this expansion. While they’re not the prime movers in these historical dramas, horses are highly visible, large, charismatic animals imbued with great symbolic importance from their earliest domestication. Simply put, horses set certain men, or women, apart in their feats of strength, their wealth, and most obviously by sitting a good four feet higher than their peers. How dramatic it was then that the late medieval voyages of exploration brought European horses as far as the Americas, breaking a many millennia long period of isolation between the continents. And what better symbol of conquest in this new land than the conquistador on horseback. The horse was a potent symbol of both conquest, the speed, mobility, and agility of invading forces. And colonization, the dominance of a new equine mounted elite. This is a victorious depiction of Hernan Cortes from the History of Tlaxcala drawn in the mid 16th century by indigenous artists from one of his most critical allies. In the 100 or so images in the series, the horse becomes a repeated visual trope signifying the Spanish at war. But as you’ll see, as I talk further today, this image is only the tip of the iceberg. Seeing the horse as a symbol of conquest is not actually self-evident. The horse was far from the most important factor in this moment of upheaval and change when compared to the tens of thousands of indigenous allies, the Spanish relied on in their campaigns or the ravages of contagious disease that decimated native communities. Instead, this iconography is an artifact of centuries of conquest within the Iberian peninsula that established legal and political systems making horses essential to governing. And in the following images, I will describe these systems, how they were applied in the Spanish Empire and the Americas, and finally, what was different about these relationships with horses and humans in the new world. With apologies to all of my preceding speakers, to gallop rapidly over 1000 years in just one sentence. (audience laughing) Native Iberian horse culture in reality contained deep influences of several colonizing civilizations. From the 8th century BC on, Greek and then Carthaginian traders moved in from the south while Celtic settlers did so from the north, seeking local metal deposits and encountering local horse populations. The center image of Iberian pottery depicts two horsemen from Valencia brandishing their lances in a ritual show of force and is dated to the 3rd century BC. Later as Carthage waged war against the Roman Republic in the 2nd century BC, both sides called in cosmopolitan cavalries to the peninsula from Celtic, Germanic, and North African origins. Celtic cavalry were known for riding in a formation called the trimarkisia, which supported the mounted warrior with two attendants who brought two horses as remounts. And this influenced Germanic and Roman cavalry forces throughout Europe. In the image on the left, you can almost see this horned saddle used to keep the rider in place instead of stirrups. But longstanding influences from North Africa were equally powerful in Iberia. On the right is a Numidian cavalryman, and these were sourced by both Carthage and Rome, known for their light cavalry tactics used in skirmishes, raids, and flanking maneuvers. This North African influence became more pronounced after the rise of Islam as Arab and Berber forces would conquer and colonize the peninsula multiple times between the 8th and the 12th centuries. Arabic language sources offer few visual representations of these riders, but we can still see some of their influence here. On the left is an image from the Beatus of Girona, a commentary on the Book of Revelation illuminated in the 10th century. It depicts an Islamic rider as one of the harbingers of the apocalypse in a style that blends both Mozarab or Christian, Andalusian, and North African influences. On the right is an image from a 13th century song cycle about the miracles of the Virgin Mary, which beautifully illustrates several equine tales. And this one depicts the forces of the king of Marrakesh in a style of seat and armor also in use in the Iberian peninsula known as riding, “a la jineta.” The order of medieval knights that developed in the high Middle Ages in Spain or Iberia, like the order of Santiago, were slow to adopt the heavier armored styles you might be familiar with in Northern Europe. It was not until courtly tournament practices came into vogue in the 15th century that this was emphasized. Here you have a scene from the Room of Battles in the Royal Palace of Escorial, and it depicts a famous battle in 1431 between the forces of John II of Castile and the troops of Mohammed the ninth, the Nazareth Sultan of Granada. In the black circle you see the heavy knight in full armor charging, which with a couched lance. In the yellow circle you see another Castilian knight, you can identify by the helmet, fighting a la jineta, or what was also known as the Moorish style, with shorter stirrups, shield, and lance. And to return for a moment here to the conquistadors in the Americas, they’re likewise pictured in both styles, although more predominantly in the jineta or light cavalry version on the left. The shifting alliances and conflicts between competing Christian kingdoms and Muslim caliphs, emirates and taifa states gave rise to what has been called a society organized for war. This map is a thumbnail sketch of these changing frontiers. The region between Toledo and Granada, or between the green and the blue lines changed hands between the 11th to the 15th centuries and particularly the southern frontier zone shaped the role of horses in newly conquered territory. Granada would be fully incorporated into the kingdom of Castile in 1492, the same year that Columbus unwittingly landed in the new world. These continuous military campaigns supported a transactional economy enabling non-noble men at arms to gain the privileges of knights. A foot soldier who unhorsed an opponent would gain a larger share of loot and rights to use municipal lands in the new settlements. In contrast, newly conquered Muslim and Jewish subjects would be prohibited from riding horses. This arrangement known as the popular or non-noble cavalry is one where the king extended privileges to an individual who supplied his own horse. And this is quite distinct from the traditional feudal model of a knight who pledged his fealty to a Lord in order to be provided with an expensive horse and armor. Formalized in the 14th century, this social status was sometimes memorialized in a city confraternity like it was for these two knights from the city of Burgos. The status became an essential requirement for anyone who wanted to obtain a government post in any of the newly conquered cities. When the king distributed land grants to towns, military orders, or these individual knights, the horse served as a basic unit of measurement a cavalleria was roughly the amount of land allocated for grazing your horse, a cavallo. The king also prohibited moving or selling horses outside of specific jurisdictions as state military assets. Consequently, good government for a city required horse breeding. For much of the year, these animals lived at liberty. They were moved seasonally between communal summer and winter pastures. And local mares would be gathered for breeding each year by town officials. These are some of the deeply ingrained traditions that had a strong influence on Spanish expansion from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World. In 1493, not ’92, Columbus returned to the New World to bringing the first 25 horses to the island of Hispaniola. Today, Haiti and Dominican Republic. Only 16 survived the journey, but horses soon multiplied across the Americas reestablishing a species that had to the best of our knowledge gone extinct 10,000 years earlier. Although now in a new tropical environment, the horse’s role in these conquest territories retained three core elements: gaining rights to use land, qualification for holding political office, and government breeding programs fueling further expansion. The map on the right shows some of the roots that introduce horses to different regions in North and South America. For example, a similar path to higher social status extended to the Americas as many conquistadors received grants of land called encomiendas for their service. And in exchange for the land, indigenous labor and tax exemptions, they were expected to maintain a certain number of horses. However, the Spanish did not encounter native populations of horses. So these matters appeared quite urgent to colonial officials. Mortality, as you might have seen from those numbers earlier, was as high as 50% for horses arriving by sea. And losses in military expeditions further increase their scarcity. Men joining the first invasion of Peru resorted to buying shares in an individual animal in order to claim partial reward for their service "on horseback" because of the expense and scarcity of these horses. So the motivation to breed horses was high. Following trends in prices, it’s estimated that livestock in the Caribbean grew a hundredfold within the first 15 years, and by the second half of the 16th century, pastures in central Mexico boasted herds of tens of thousands of animals. Two critical reasons for this huge growth include the continuing depopulation of indigenous communities throughout, and also the loose or free ranging herd management from Iberian traditions of transhumance transferred to new land grants that were often held in absentia. Developing a large horse population was critically important to Spanish methods of governing conquest territories. But the soon to emerge feral herds of horses known as cimmarrones would also challenge Spanish domination over colonial environments. And we’ll turn to that part of the story next. So, what was the first impression of horses from a native perspective, both in armed conflicts and on a psychological level? Domesticated animals were already in use in many places in the Americas for food and transportation, but the horse was unique in that it was strong enough to carry a full-grown human on its back. Fighting from horseback had distinct advantages and disadvantages depending on the terrain. Knowing this, the Spanish attempted to cultivate fear in indigenous people’s encounters with horses, emphasizing the use of the horse as an agent of surprise, secrecy — such as burying horses that had died at night, and misinformation about their flesh eating proclivities. Conversely, records of indigenous experiences illustrate acute understanding of how to neutralize cavalry tactics and how crucially symbolic the horse was to their Spanish opponents. The Florentine Codex produced in collaboration with indigenous informants, scribes, and artists in the Nahua language of Central Mexico, is one of the most important post-conquest manuscripts for appreciating these indigenous perspectives. And the Getty Research Institute, as an aside, will be launching a new searchable digital edition of this text next week, So the timing is great. Book 12 of this text describes the arrival of the Spaniards to Tenochtitlan or Mexico City, from the perspective of the Mexica in the Aztec Triple Alliance. Notably, approximately one third of the 150 illustrations accompanying the narrative depict horses, giving the horse a marked prominence in the visual narrative. This image on the left is of Moctezuma’s initial reception of the Spanish, and it captures highly emotive and expressive individual horses. The Nahua text in English translation reads: horses, "came with bells on, jingling or rattling. The horses, the deer, neighed, there was much neighing, and they would sweat a great deal. Water seemed to fall from them and their flecks of foam splatted on the ground like soap suds. As they went, they made a beating, throbbing, and hoof pounding like throwing stones." Of course, interactions initially with horses primarily took place in terms of violent armed combat. Horses were clearly agents that the Spanish used to exert excessive force, in the impact of a cavalry charge, a hit and run raid, or by spearing people trapped in an enclosed courtyard as is depicted in the center image. This account championed the valiant cause of the Mexica in defending their home. Their ability to strategically swart the approach of the Spanish cavalry included tactics like using the watery canals in the city to their advantage. A proud account on the right of unhorsing a conquistador is an example of their individual skill and bravery. In the Americas, the words used to describe horses, as Carolyn mentioned, relate them to deer, elk, or dogs depending on the region of contact. In this text, we find a variation on the Nahua term for deer, and it interestingly does not distinguish between the horse alone and the horse and rider as a unit. So, who was the more powerful partner, the horse or the rider? These images show the horse’s strengths and weaknesses, their mortality, but also attention to the animals’ emotions and behaviors, to the point that the horse seems to become part of the Spanish battle regalia and perhaps a cosmic source of their strength. Much like the omens scattered throughout the text, a justification explaining the ultimate tide of war. As they had in other conquered territories, the Spanish prohibited their new indigenous subjects from riding horses under saddle or carrying arms. And this was a formal ban that would not be lifted until 1653. Nevertheless, across Mexico and Peru, indigenous allies gained access to horses through existing Spanish customs of rewarding military service. Conquistadors had relied on tens of thousands of allies as warriors, guides, and translators and military service facilitated acquiring new privileges like horseback riding. Over 1100 individual permissions to ride, own, or use a horse appear in the records of the Viceroyalty of New Spain before 1600. And this map illustrates their distribution. One of the earliest documented examples was for a cacique in Huejotzingo, Don Tomé, who served on a Spanish campaign in 1530. In Peru, Pizarro brought with him an indigenous ally named Don Martín, who after the campaign received an encomienda or land in Cajamarca, and later also fought as a mounted cavalry man in Spain, much like the more famous Garcilaso the Inca after him. This familiarity with horses was also used to resist. For example, Manco Inca, one of the several princes in Peru, who had initially viewed the Spaniards as potential strategic allies, learned how to ride while held in captivity. He later used this knowledge of horses and cavalry maneuvers to rebel. In the Siege of Cusco in 1535, for example, he used tactics like seizing the higher ground to neutralize cavalry charges, digging pits to break horses’ legs, and even flooding entire fields to make them impassable for men on horseback. It comes as no surprise then that some voices strenuously objected to indigenous peoples growing familiarity with horses. In 1555, the Franciscan friar Molto Linea wrote to Charles V that many Indians had horses and would, "want to be equal for some time with the Spanish." And in Peru, just a few years later, governor Garcia de Castro also complained of the carelessness the Spanish had exhibited in allowing Indians to ride horses. Developing an equestrian complex or a horse culture is a transformative cultural adaptation. You might think first what comes to mind are the cultures of the great plains, like the Comanche or the Lakota. But of all the diverse groups of people exposed to horses during this period of radical upheaval, only a few adopted the horse as an integral part of their culture, and this is a testament to the magnitude of making this change. In fact, many early accounts from both New Spain and Peru show a strong preference for killing horses over capturing them. And when horse theft was used against the Spanish, the animals were often killed or maimed rather than put to use. And in the up upper left corner here, you can see. This is to say it took some time for new cultural frameworks around horses to develop. Familiarity with horses through Spanish spheres of influence, like the licenses to ride, was one avenue, but indigenous equestrianism also developed outside of Spanish control in the 16th century. The northern states of Mexico, highlighted in that colorful map on the right, known to the Spanish as the Grand Chichimeca, was the site of a long-lasting conflict between colonizers and a confederation of several indigenous peoples that began in the 1530s and lasted until 1590. To resist Spanish mining and enslaving incursions, they systematically cut off supplies on the few roads available in the horse theft situation. By the 1580s, the Chichimeca reportedly had more horses than the Spanish and were trading horses further to the interior. This is a map from the account of a town near Guadalajara. And you can see in the images and the figures, both the proliferation of livestock, cattle and horses on here, as well as indigenous armed resistance almost everywhere. Chronicler Juan Suarez Peralta commented on the large number of horses wandering the northern parts of New Spain and described how the Chichimeca had developed their own form of horse breeding even, using temporary corrals. So, the reports and pathways of horses making their way north still remained to be confirmed in greater detail, but have the appearance of beginning as early as the mid 16th century. Looking to the South America, we also encounter a similarly long lived conflict fueled by horses in Chile, where the Mapuche people were early adopters. And this map — you just have to turn sideways. The north is to the left. Depictions of indigenous riders on horseback are extremely rare in historical documentation. But in this map from a 1646 history of Chile, they are memorialized as fierce opponents on horseback in both the upper right and left-hand corners. The Chronicle or Diego de Ocaña tells the story of one well-known leader La Toro, taken into service from his homeland by conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, he served as a stable groom before being brought to the southern frontier. On escaping to join the Mapuche cause, Le Toro took a leadership role an offensive in 1554, where his force of 8,000 drove the Spanish cavalry off of a cliff in a total rout. He also fielded his own cavalry force by the 1560s. Four decades later, the conflict was still heated. And in the 1598 disaster of Curalaba a Mapuche force captured 400 horses and other valuable loot from a Spanish fort. And this is a beautiful manuscript drawing of Anganamón’s challenge on the left to Governor Garcia de Loyola who died in Curalaba. And this indigenous leader was known for his tactical innovation of mounting his infantry to keep up with his cavalry. The same year a massive force of 1000 mounted Mapuche emptied the countryside around Argol of all of its livestock in a massive raid. In all, the Spanish lost thousands of horses to a remarkably large opposing indigenous cavalry. So before today you might have thought of the horse as a tool of conquest employed by their human riders and military commanders, but these examples also show how human culture is shaped by the cascading effects of our more-than-human relationships. First, based on centuries of conquest and colonization within Iberia, horses had served as a basic measure for gaining social status, access to political office and distributing territory. A growing abundance of horses measured the progress of Spanish colonization in the new world in some sense, but it could also be argued that these same policies generated the feral horse herds that created new problems for colonial control. On the other hand, indigenous actors also had their own interests in mind as became more familiar with horses across military, political and economic arenas. They slaughtered them, they stole them, they rode them, took care of them, traded them, and used them for their own political ends. Ultimately, from the story we can see that horses influenced how conquest and colonization unfolded. They served as engines of both social exclusion and social mobility across the Spanish empire. Growing through both intentional and unintentional breeding, their abundance reveals a central tension between the colonizer’s desire to populate new lands with horses and to regulate their use and possession. And indigenous equestrianism developed both within and outside of Spanish areas of influence, meaning that the horse spread not only as a symbol of conquest, but also a tool of resistance. And so, emphasizing this type of agency within horse-human relationships during periods of conquest and colonization, offers us a much richer tapestry of historical continuity and change, thank you. (audience clapping) – Hi everyone, thank you so much for having me here. I’m William Taylor, I’m a curator of archaeology at the Natural History Museum at the University of Colorado, and I’m a little bit of a fish out of water here as the lone bone-guy, but I think it’s really nice here to come at the heels of so much excellent scholarship on things like history and art because we’ve seen such a nice sampling of the human-horse story. So, what I’m going to try to do today is just give a little bit of an overview of how we put together that big picture of people and horses and maybe some of the ways that the changing landscape of science is changing the way we think about those things. As everyone in this room knows, the domestication of the horse was really one of the most momentous events in human history. And while today in downtown or seaside Los Angeles it’s pretty rare that we’re encountering a horse on the street. You might — mostly, in our day-to-day, they’re either a novelty, like a tourist carriage or kind of an elite hobby, right? I like to watch videos of Arnold Schwartzenegger on Instagram and he has — he’s got his little mini-horses that live with him. But for most of us, most of the time, horses have retreated from their immediate visibility in our day-to-day life. But it really wasn’t long ago that horses were really fundamental to almost every aspect of that day-to-day life, things like agriculture and military, even down to just basic day-to-day communication. This is a little stamp, commemorative stamp I took from Mongolia where the horse-based postal system was still rocking and rolling through World War II and maybe even a little bit beyond. For me, trying to understand, the ways that horses came to shape the world that we lived in and how those have changed over time is an important question. And one of the reasons it’s particularly important — I’m going to jump forward here, is that it shaped my own family’s history. This is my grandfather Park Taylor. I grew up in Montana. My grandpa here was a classic kind of Montana rancher. My dad also grew up on the ranch, and then I was a first generation that just kind of grew up sitting around in the city, right? but amidst the legacy of all this kind of horse culture, right? And so for me, trying to understand how we got to this point and what it all means is kind of a way to understand my family’s role in the world too. I thought this was an interesting little picture, just to show this horse. Infrastructure here in LA, this is one of the street cars from the late 19th century. And as I was looking at this picture, I was thinking this is probably a more efficient way to get to my hotel than budget rent-a-car, which start to finish took me about three hours. (audience laughing) Yeah, not all progress is forward. As an archaeologist, and I think we had a couple of talks nicely highlight this, horses are incredibly special and in fact, horses are the first animal for which we really have a solid evidence of a deep human connection. And that goes back as far back as half a million or even almost a million years. Sites, incredible sites from places like central or western Europe, Schöningen or Boxgrove, show evidence of people not just hunting horses, but making tools out of horse remains and really having a sophisticated understanding of their ecology. As Carolyn mentioned, horses are among the earliest works of human art and among the most depicted animal in certain areas like the Eurasian Paleolithic. And so we have this very, very long,deep and intimate relationship, but the earliest chapters of that relationship may look very different from Arnold Schwarzenegger and his mini horse, or even just understanding how horses came to live in such close connectivity with people, and develop things like their role as a transport animal. which is one of the ways that we’re most familiar with them today. A lot of my work as an archaeologist seeks to understand, the transition between this point and this point. And unfortunately, the deeper we go back into the past, the harder that process really becomes. Today we’ve seen some glorious artistic or historical documentation of the human-horse connection. But in fact, many of the places where we want to know the origins of horse cultures, we’re also going beyond the limits of the historic record into areas where, we’re talking about kind of cold, frigid, sub-arctic grasslands. Areas where folks weren’t necessarily leaving behind a wealth of artistic depictions or classical archaeological materials. And so we really have to think creatively to find ways to explore these early aspects of the human-horse story when we go a little bit deeper into time. So a lot of my work has centered around trying to figure out, is there a workaround here? And how do we understand the first chapters of that human-horse story when we don’t have beautiful works of art. One of the things that we do often have, and the thing that I spend most of my time doing is looking at animal remains from archaeological sites. So obviously bones, you know, preserve relatively well. They’re relatively present and ubiquitous in the archaeological record, and encode a surprising amount of information about, not just about horse biology or some of the things we might expect, but actually about all sorts of nuances of the interactions between people and horses. And I learned this out of necessity myself when I started trying to understand the origins of horse culture and human-horse relationships in Mongolia. I did my dissertation research here in the beautiful open steppes of Mongolia. Now Mongolia is a place we all associate you know, at the drop of a hat, with the great horse cultures of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. But it’s proven surprisingly challenging and elusive to understand the beginnings of that domestication or human-horse relationship there. And part of the reason is that the historic record is written from the outside looking in, right? For a long time there were a lot of folks with their own agenda who would’ve said, "Hey, Mongolians started riding horses in around 2nd century BC, which just happened to coincide with the unification of China,” as sort of an accidental symptom of the greatness of early Chinese states. It might not surprise you to learn that Mongolians didn’t love that idea. And in fact, there’s rich but also confusing archaeological record that extends a thousand years or so beyond the 2nd century BC and doesn’t quite tell us a lot of things with certainty. These are some beautiful stone monuments. They’re known as Deer Stones for their elaborate deer tattoo-like carvings. They’re these anthropomorphic human-like figures, and they emerge all over the Mongolian steps and even into China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan even at the end of the second millennium BC and they have horse burials around them, sometimes in the ones or twos, sometimes in the dozens, hundreds or even thousands at a few sites. So it looks like this sort of explosive new relationship with horses. But there isn’t — – this is kind of it in terms of what we have to look at. There are these stones and there are these bones. And so this is where we had to work from in terms of understanding that relationship. Over time and through the growing comparison of horses that we know today, either from archaeological sites around the world or from natural history collections, where people that had donated a horse that lived a particular life — like the skeletons of race horses or military horses or wild horses, feral horses, zoo horses. We began to understand that there so many aspects of the life history of a horse are actually recorded in some way in the skeleton. The skeleton is this reflection or chronicle of the life of the animal that it once belonged to. And through this we began to realize that certain correlates, osteological correlates, could really tell us pieces of that story. So in looking again at the horses that came out of these Deer Stone burials, we first identified a number of different things that we think were associated with transport: things linked with heavy exertion, this sort of thing. But also, right here we have a depression to the bridge of the nose caused by a bridle. This is a smoking gun, direct link, that says, "Hey, this animal was harnessed and bridled at some point in the past." Over the years, we’ve built outwards from this, drawing on the work of other scholars, and also just exploring horses that live different kinds of lives, both now and in the past, and in doing so, have been able to see that there’s actually so much more to be learned. This is a study that we had out this year. We studied the skeleton of Chinese chariots [horses] from the early first millennium BC and compared those with the first kind of a set of cavalry or ridden horses from a similar region a few centuries later. And we compared the occurrence of skeletal pathologies, like new bone formation or little problems that develop here and there and where they were showing up in terms of their frequency. And we found that in fact, as it might not surprise you, but which is very valuable to us as archaeologists, that different kinds of repeated activities will leave different patterning in those little skeletal changes. So here, you know, these animals that were pulling these royal chariots, they developed problems in their neck and shoulder, but not so much in the kind of middle back region where mounted riding was generating a lot of problems. This is one example of the ways that holistic full skeleton studies actually allow us to parse out things occasionally, like, “how was this animal used in the past?” And to develop and add these to our toolkit of exploring early domestication. This has also allowed us to do things like recognize certain kinds of equipment. We had a study out this year where we, without the equipment being there, were able to say that a certain type of relatively nasty Spanish colonial bit was probably used to control a well-preserved horse from central Kansas in the 16th century. Just on the basis of how the mechanics of using that piece of equipment might have affected the animal while it was alive and what was left preserved in the skeleton. So archaeozoology has turned out to be this incredible tool to understand the living history of an animal and pull together these bits of that relationship with people. How was it used, what kinds of equipment, even aspects of early veterinary care. Things that we can sort of read from the tea leaves here of the skeleton. But what’s been really amazing over the last 10, 15, 20 years has been the revolution in archaeological science of biomolecules. Now for archaeologists, this means a lot of different things, and we’ll show what those things are. Archaeologists for many, many years have been a really big fan of radiocarbon dating. This is a scientific technique that allows us to measure how many years ago with a plus or minus error term, an organism died. Based on the frequency of an unstable isotope of carbon that remains in that organic material that’s left. But what’s been different is that over time, our precision at measuring this and the speed and the price at which we can get a precise radiocarbon date has improved and improved. So now, rather than just a ballpark figure, we can actually understand and apply it to whole data sets. And use scientific dating to do things like tracing. In this case, we studied the first spread of domesticated horses into the Mongolian step just by doing a lot of this and mapping it out. So that ability to build larger data sets built on radiocarbon dates has been very powerful and important. Sorry, my microphone’s kind of falling off my ear here. The really big game changer here has been changes in genomics. Hard to believe, but it was just a few years ago really, in big picture terms, that we began to sequence full scale genomes. But nowadays ancient genomics is so sophisticated that it can handle really bad, poorly preserved, fragmentary material. And it’s not just a thing about understanding evolution or, you know, pharmacology or these sorts of things anymore. Now, ancient DNA can be an applied tool for archaeologists. So I can find a single specimen and say, "Hey, tell me what you know from a little bit of DNA on this specimen." And we can learn from a bone whether that animal was male or female, whether its parents — we can see a mule versus a horse or sometimes we can even see aspects of their, what they were like when they’re alive that we would otherwise never see, like their coat color. And doing this has allowed us to really visualize these changing human-horse relationships over time to see the emergence of the way that things like aesthetic preference of people or trade or these things are actually manifesting in the archaeological record. And then, other biomolecular tools like isotope analysis allow us to take a single tooth and learn all sorts of nuance about the relationship between people and that horse. Things like the sequential analysis of isotope in a single tooth told us, in this case of one of our ancient horses, exactly where the animal likely spent its time during a year of its life. And they showed us that this horse, which was found again in central Kansas, was probably fed during the winter months with corn because of the changing signature of carbon isotopes. That allowed us to say that this horse was integrated into a kind of an indigenous economic and management system all from just a single tooth here, right? So over time, the ability to analyze all these different lines of evidence from what just a few years ago would’ve just been called a horse bone and put in a box has really changed the game in terms of our ability to understand the deepest chapters of the past. Here’s where I’m going to get into trouble because not everyone agrees with me, but I think it’s totally crucial now that we’re armed with these tools, to revisit how we think about the origins of horse domestication. And in particular, right now the main candidate from probably the last 10, 15 years for understanding when horses were first domesticated will focus on Northern Kazakhstan, a site called Botai dated to around 3,500 BC. Now, Botai is a fascinating site. Thousands and thousands of horse bone, almost a hundred percent of the animal bones recovered from the site are horses. But it’s a site for which the argument for domestication has been built largely without the presence of the tools that I’ve shown here today. And over time, these emerging techniques are prompting us to revisit these. So in particular, one of the big arguments for horse domestication at Botai was the recognition of a certain- let me see if I can get my pointer to go here- a tooth or two that have a pretty unique problem. This is a wearing off of the anterior edge of that tooth. When we first began to recognize that horse transport could be traced in their bones and teeth. This was a good candidate for something that might’ve been caused by a mouthpiece of a bridle. But over time we’ve developed a recognition that these problems and some of their… This particular feature is actually also visible very frequently in wild horses from the North America during the last ice age. And that perhaps developmental and nutritional defects can produce things that look a lot like damage related to transport. As the biomolecular toolkit has expanded, this has also caused a lot of upheaval to the narrative of horse domestication, showing that all the horses from this site of Botai once thought to be the origins of the human-horse domestication relationship are actually not ancestrally related to domestic horses at all. They’re instead the Przewalski horse, which we saw a little bit about today and which has today, you know, been reintroduced in certain areas of Mongolia and Central Asia. So, while some folks took a look at this and said, "Oh boy, well, I guess we have two horse domestications, and then this one didn’t work out," this has prompted others of us to kind of take a second look, and a more skeptical Look, at the idea of Botai as domestication at all. And in fact, you know, this is a couple of the finds from Botai in which some of those horse bones were found right with kind of the arrows in the ribs, showing that they were actually hunted. There’s a lot of ongoing discussion around this, but as those biomolecular tools have improved, it now seems that the DNA and the archaeology actually converge. Around 2000 BC we have our genomic evidence for the first ancestors of modern domestic horses, and they’re appearing in this same region of Western Central Asia, the northern Black Sea steppes, the Euro Mountains, and even into northwest Kazakhstan, but about 1500 years later, or maybe a few centuries before. At this time horses that are genomically identified as the ancestor of modern horses appear right at the same time that the first really solid archaeological evidence for horse domestication also appears. We have these chariot burials, partial chariot burials known as the Sintashta culture. And also things like osteological problems related to transport are being found in the horses from this time period. Then the genomic research that’s come out over the last two or three years is really important because it shows that within just a few centuries, not 1500 years, we have the first evidence for horses and chariots, and we have this incredible explosion outwards from this core domestic horse region into almost every corner of ancient Eurasia and even North Africa over half a millennium. So really important and transformative change took place at this time. I don’t bring together all these different emerging tools just to sort of “poo poo” existing ideas about horse domestication. I think they’ve really given us a very powerful toolkit for understanding the whole of antiquity and the changes in our relationship between people and horses over the centuries. Over the last couple years we’ve been trying to find different ways to apply them to different, but yet equally important and powerful chapters of that story. One of the things that we found is that archaeological science actually helps us restore some of the gaps in the global archaeological and historical records, showing us, for example, that things that we thought we knew pretty well about chronology might not have the whole picture. In this case, we radiocarbon dated some recently discovered archaeological sites in Mongolia, in which there are full scale frame saddles and even stirrups, early stirrups. And the results were a little bit surprising. They suggest that although historical texts might point somewhere like China or Korea, that some of the earliest, the world’s earliest evidence for both a kind of a wooden frame saddle and a real stirrup might have actually either been earlier adopted or even innovated in the eastern steppes of Mongolia. Something we would never know without scientific archaeology. But these tools are not only useful simply for understanding the deepest chapters of the past. And in fact, just this year we found that one of their most important applications is in counterbalancing perspectives that you might draw from history alone. We had a paper, folks mentioned it a little bit, out earlier this year, in which we did an expansive program of looking at what stories we could learn from horse bones in the great plains of North America, doing a lot of radiocarbon ancient DNA. And what we discovered is that, in some cases, especially the central and northern plains of North America, that the two data sets history on the one hand, archaeology and scientific study, on the other hand, are telling a little bit of a different story. They suggest that horses spread through indigenous social networks, a lot like in Dr. Renton’s talk, into areas like Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, decades, or in some cases even centuries before the first historical chronicle written by a European observer might’ve shown. These perspectives are aligning with a lot of the traditional knowledge from our indigenous collaborators and partners. We worked with scholars, elders, scientists from native nations across the plains, particularly Comanche, Pawnee, and Lakota folks. And the archaeological techniques turned out to be an important and powerful compliment for exploring the role of historic records and shaping and perhaps biasing the way we think on these topics to an important degree. I think this is a very powerful and important new direction for archaeological science to work as a collaborative toolkit for expanding, questioning, or probing some of what we think we know from existing lines of inquiry. Tt’s an interesting time in archaeological science. (audience laughing) It might not surprise you to learn I took that picture in Mongolia. I think this is only one or two of them that they have that are like this, but I got a kick out of it. It kind of shows the future, right? The human-horse story has changed a lot in a very short period of time. Thinking back to my grandpa’s world in 1903, he was riding a horse to work or riding a horse was work, right? And there are still some parts of the world where that’s true today, Mongolia here being one of them. But as the world changes and our relationships with horses change, I think it becomes really important to elucidate through archaeology, through history, through art, what the impacts of horses have been and what that means for the future. What we see from archaeological science now is that perhaps there are some things that are a little different. Maybe the trajectory of that domestication relationship is shorter, but it also is more dynamic. We can see through archaeology just how quick, and transformative sometimes, the impact of something like horse chariots, horse transport or horse domestication can be across the ancient world. I think that it also gives us a chance to, through archaeological science, elevate the contributions of the world’s horse cultures, which are often in these remote, cold, pastoral, nomadic contexts that — when we take history record-based approach — often get short shrift. So these scientific tools are allowing us to fill in some of those gaps in important ways. And if we can do so collaboratively, I think we have the ability to tell some very, very new and some very, very important stories. With that, if you’re interested in exploring some of these things more, you can read more about it in my book here, which is coming out next year, it’s off to the printers. University of California press, probably halfway through 2024. Thank you so much for your time and look forward to talking with you more. (audience clapping) – We are going to start our Q&A session momentarily, but what I would like to do, just to sort of refresh everyone’s memory, because we’ve had an awesome afternoon of talks and we’ve kept the Q&A period for the end. We’re going to go through each of the speakers, and I have warned them of this ahead of time and not throwing them under the chariot, so to speak, to ask them to, in 30 to 60 seconds, sum up what they think the key takeaway of their talk is about the horse-human partnership. I will use my privilege to go first since I spoke first. And I would say, because I did the broad spectrum approach, the key takeaway I’m hoping people picked up from my talk was that horses and humans have a very tangible and at times emotive bond that in the past horses weren’t just tools or objects, but that there is a degree of understanding and of partnership between them. I think I get to have the cheesiest one because I had the most broadly based talk. I can’t be quite specific as everyone else. So I will hand it over to Carol. – I think from Xenophon we learn how little has changed. Horses are horses, we may change how we sit, how we move the horse to do what we wanted to do. But we have to do it in concert with a horse. And we are all after the same ends, that we are a pair working together. Horses don’t change, our approach to horses does. But also Xenophon makes it very clear that one of your goals- if the horse doesn’t do what you want, you can be in big trouble. So that’s the point, whatever field you’re in. – I think I would argue that the Romans lived in a world full of animals. It’s remarkable the animals that they came into contact and lived with, but that the horse is the only animal that was a social binding agent in their society. And as I hope I’ve shown, not just in life, but also through death. – [Carolyn] Katherine. – I think the interesting point is how horses influence us. My talk was about conquest and colonization and that there are multiple ways that those relationships can turn. So is the horse meant to conquer or to resist and what choice you have. I’m also inspired by the idea of what Anna Tsing in "Feral Atlas" has called a counter intentional effect with our relationships with animals and the natural environment. That we have to take into account our negotiations with those non-human animals and the interspecies landscapes that we are looking at historically. – [Carolyn] And Will. – Cool. I think my simplest thing is that bones are amazing. (audience laughing) But in particular that if we only focus on things like historic texts or artistic representations, we end up missing so much of the human-horse story. And so, you know, horse cultures in grasslands around the world from, you know, Mongolia to the Pampas or the Great Plains or the deserts of North Africa, there are pieces of that story preserved in bone. And if we really want to understand and do justice to the contribution of folks from horse country, we’ve got to look at bones. – I think it’s pretty clear from all of us, that horses connect us together and they’re this really fantastic living artifact that gives us this tangible, very real connection to past and present. With that, we’re going to have a mix- Shelby is wrangling our online questions. Those of you attending online, we know you are there, but of course we have our in-person audience as well. So we’re going to bounce back and forth. I’d love to give the opportunity for some of our in-person attendees to ask a question. We have people with microphones, we can pass those around. Oh, and we’ve already got it. We’ve got a taker, awesome. – [Attendee 1] Is it already on? Is it on? Okay, I was a blacksmith for 15 years, you know, shoeing horses. And in all of my research, because I was trying boots and glues and everything, nailing a horseshoe with horseshoe nails on a hoof has been for centuries the best way to nail, and the most practical way. But in all of your research, did you come up with hoof care, boots, shoes, nails, addressing hoof issues? Because they’re a big issue in terms of traction, in terms of sore hooves and damaged hooves and thrush and disease. So as a blacksmith, I ran into all that with the horses I worked on. So I assumed through antiquity. And what did you find in terms of the documentation or whatever of how previous cultures addressed the hoof? – I’ll pass it to Carol maybe to start, because I know Xenophon talks a little bit about feet. He does like his feet, so. – Right Xenophon knows that they really need their feet. Horses have to be sound and they have to be well-behaved. And so he has this wonderful section which he says, "Put round stones in the paddock, heap stones up, have them stand on that and toughen their feet in that way." That’s the most he says about it, but it’s telling. – He also talks about in one of his other texts when they’re marching through Turkey, up in the high mountains, the locals in the snow recommend putting bags over the horse’s feet almost to make them like snow shoes, I presume. And the Romans had a thing called a hipposandal, which is like the earliest Easyboot . It’s this massive metal thing that they tied on, but was not for actual day-to-day use. But Will, I don’t know, with your bone stuff, have you encountered any hoof things? – You know, so in the steppes, one of the funny things is most of the time when horses are out there free ranging, the first thing that’s kind of shocking is the degree to which essentially unmanaged hoof health in a lot of areas is excellent. We do have archaeological evidence for horseshoes. They are notoriously difficult to date as just like a hunk of metal. Some of the coolest ones would be — during the Viking era there are snow shoes that would be made out of twine and bark, wrapped, for getting up on the high mountains — In some rougher areas of ancient Mongolia for example, there’s evidence that they were doing probably something pretty similar to what folks are still doing today in terms of metal shoes and nails. I would say I have once in a while seen something a little simpler, which is just, I don’t know whether you pour molten metal on the hoof or something that appears to be kind of unnailed, but I don’t imagine that that would be all that stable. – But yeah, there’s been an interest in the “no hoof, no horse” thing for a very, very long time. That’s nothing new. – [Attendee 2] (indistinct). – I have one more comment too from the ice. In our high mountain ice-we have a paper coming out soon- we do have evidence that as early as the end of the second millennium BC folks were actively engaged in trimming and caring for a broken nail or that sort of thing, maybe even in the field, right? So folks were clearly paying a lot of attention to hoof care from a very, very early stage just based on that one find. – So we’re going to go to the very back first. Lisa is pointing at someone. – [Attendee 3] Yeah, both Carolyn and Kathryn list in their bios something called the, where is it, Equine History Collective. And I’d be very interested in hearing more about that. And where were you guys when I was writing my dissertation? (All laughing) – I will, so I’ve just become past president of the Equine History Collective, but as Kathryn was one of the founding members of this super awesome group, little plug, you can do a plug, I’ll let Kathryn talk about the EHC a little bit. – Sure, well you can find it on www.equinehistory.org and it rose out of dissertation research. Likewise, you’re not wanting to be isolated as the horse person, but the more you dig into the topic, the more you realize it has roots across cultures, across time periods and that you can never hope to be an expert in all of them. So, you need to know a good archaeologist and a good classicist to help you decipher some of those clues. It’s an affordable membership based group for anyone interested, either from a scholarly perspective, a professional perspective, or personal interest horse enthusiast perspective. – You got veterinarians, farriers, artists, whole nine yards. So yeah, come by. Alright, we’ll do one more in-person question. We got one in the back and then we’ll jump to our folks online as well. – [Attended 4] Hello, it’s just two of you mentioned the reemergence of the horse in North America. Is that a horse as we know it? Or a different kind of horse? And where did it go and anything about that? – Will, Kathryn, do you want to arm wrestle over it? – No, you go ahead. – Well, I can give a brief summary and you can fill in the details, but yes, the evolution of the horse as it’s known today, it traces its ancestry to the plains, the grasslands of North America. And there were migrations across the Bering Land Strait, presumably of earlier versions. The horse in the Americas today is a descendant of what William was talking about, the modern domesticated horse in that particular branch. I don’t have the dates, the (indistinct ) varieties that originally migrated. – The only other thing I would add is that one of the things about the big database, “date everything,” archaeological, science-y type approach is showing is that there’s a lot more nuance to the “extinction” of ice age horses. They’ve been identified in high latitudes, arctic latitudes, through some emerging techniques like sedimentary DNA perhaps as late as 5,000 years ago in some cold areas of North America. And the same is true actually in Eurasia. We’re finding that in these last 10,000 years there was a lot going on and certain areas depending on what their environment was like, there might’ve been several species of horse that we wouldn’t recognize today still alive and well in places like Mongolia or China or Siberia, not all that long ago in the big picture. So yeah, a lot of ongoing work on that. – Shelby, any questions for us from the online world? – [Shelby] There’s a question for Sinclair about Rome and racehorses and whether they were ever drafted into the military. – I should have seen this coming. (All laughing) They are such a specialized group that we don’t have a lot of evidence for that kind of usage. They are created in a very specialized context. Nothing per se that I could cite. – Well, Virgil even kind of said that you’re either going to train these horses for war or for sport and that seems to suggest there’s a clear delineation. – And the warhorse is not nearly as valuable as the racehorse. – So you had your job description picked for you by your owner, I suppose, by your bloodlines, I don’t know. Do you want to do one more online question then we can go back to in person? – [Shelby] Sure, so it’s about telling animals apart in crowded war or sports conditions and how even today with color it’s difficult, and with no giant screens and binoculars and loudspeakers, what were the methodologies? – I can maybe take the war side and then Sinclair, I might throw the sports side to you because there’s some good circus stuff. I mean, in terms of war, certainly by the time we get to the medieval period, when you think of your heavily armored knights where you can’t even see their faces, that’s where their colors became so important. So we like to call them the horse dresses informally, but they’re called comparisons and they’re these huge long blankets that the horses could wear. They’d be in specific colors, they would be emblazoned with the sigil or sort of the symbols of the knight or whomever the rider was fighting for. And then the knights, even earlier, in the crusades periods, they would have their surcoat that they would wear as well. I suppose one way to think of it is almost like a team uniform, so that you know which side is what, but yeah, sort of coming to the sport and obviously the chaos of the Roman circus. Any evidence for how? – [Sinclair] Please continue – No, no, no. Your turn, your turn. – I mean we have mosaic evidence that document clearly, that are very specific about coats and things like that. We have indications from names. So there’s a variety of evidence to suggest that sort of specificity. – Yeah and then, I mean of course in the racing world, at least in the Roman world, we had the colors. So the different charioteers wore colored uniforms to know who they were working for as well. Though I do once remember hearing something about passenger pigeons carrying messages up into the crowd to let people know who was winning. I don’t know if that’s urban myth or not, but I remember encountering that at some point. – There is a literary passage, yeah, That suggests that that was the level of investment that someone outside of Rome needed to know the outcome. – Alright, in person. – [Attendee 5] You can certainly persuasively argue that the donkey has been as important in human history as the horse. And I’m curious as to why you think that the donkey has received a lot less attention. Do you think it’s just the romantic aspect of horses or the various things that horses do, but there seems to be a lot less attention paid to donkeys, even though you could even argue today they’re more important than horses as far as third world economies and stuff. – I can quickly speak to the ancient context and then again, sort of Kathryn and Will, I don’t know if you have some modern sort of new world stuff you may want to throw in. So in the ancient context, donkeys were incredibly important. Peter Mitchell published a book called "The Donkey in Human History", and he goes through all of this. So donkeys are domesticated before horses. They’re largely responsible for the growth of overland trade. We see, prior to the introduction of horses in places like North Africa, donkeys being entered in tombs as part of sort of tomb assemblages. And then it seems like after the horse, at least in the Mediterranean world, after the domestic horse is introduced, it totally becomes a snobbery thing. You read "Aesop’s Fables" and the horse is sort of stands in as the elite, the aristocrat, the people who are writing these stories and writing this stuff down. And the donkey becomes like the blue collar worker. So it has nothing to do with practicality. Donkeys are way more useful than horses. We owe them way more probably in terms of infrastructure, but it’s the social snobbery. So it comes down to the types- And that’s where I think the bone stuff can be so interesting because the literary references always privilege the horse. – At the same time, donkeys are much more intelligent than horses and they take a very different kind of training if they accept it. (audience laughing) – [Carolyn] So yeah, from the personality and social snobbery that the elites have a lot to answer for in the classical world. – And to jump off of this snobbery piece, so Iberia was actually really well known for having a large breed of donkey. And through that, mule breeding was really important, especially in the southern part of Islamic Spain. They had camels as well, so that- with the roads in that mountainous region, mules and donkeys, their hooves were much hardier and much preferred actually for practical reasons. And one of the interesting twists of that snobbery is that the king wanted his subjects, particularly the nobility, to ride horses for the prestige and image. Many of the nobles in late medieval, early modern Spain actually preferred their mules for comfort and ease and practicality. And so there was a lot of tension between the two groups where in order to ride a mule, you had to provide a horse. And so mule riding also took on its own special characteristic within the Iberian Peninsula. They were bred and shipped in the new world for mining purposes, for example. So for a lot of industrial and practical reasons, they were extremely valuable as well. – I’ll also add that they’re not the same animal. I mean, you know, it is true that the donkey’s gotten short shrift, sorry, my mic’s going, I just have such big ears, speaking of the donkey. (All laughing) But their ecology is different. And you know, you can cross from the donkey line into the horse line if you drive around central Asia enough. But we have the same line somewhere in the American southwest. And I think that their relationship with societies are just really different based on where they do well, what’s their ancestral habitat. I think it’s interesting to think about mules. Because that same process was totally true in the ancient world. Everybody likes a mule, but there are often these transcontinental trade networks emerging to make the mules and get them north, right? And so as we’re entering a post-horse world in some ways, the places that horses are still important and the donkeys are still important are, I think still in line with those conditions. You’re not going to think we’re in a post horse world if you go to Mongolia. You go out to Eastern Montana or North Dakota, and you wouldn’t recognize that idea of a post-horse world. Same is true with donkeys. And in certain parts of the world- we had a visit to Egypt earlier in the year and there’s donkeys everywhere. And so I think that piece of it plays into that as well, in terms of where they’re still important. – [Carolyn] Definitely, another in-person question. – [Attendee 6] Yeah, that’s actually a great segue to the question, which is now that we have this wonderful history about the horses and thank you for today. What do you imagine will be the future for horses? Yeah, a lot of us are concerned. – I don’t know who wants to take this. I mean, I have thoughts, but yeah, let’s give it to Carol. – Well, I think it depends upon what kinds of horses you’re talking about. Sport horses are very popular in America and in Europe at this point. And sport horses of different kinds bring in lots of money. Now I had a jumper and I was told only way you’re ever going to make money off this good horse is if you sell him because the prize money isn’t so great. So, dealing in sport horses is a big, big business. We can also see the world of horse racing changing rather significantly because of all the doping allegations and for instance, Bob Baffert gets in big trouble, finally. (All laughing) So, people start to ask, "How come you’re racing horses that are two years old when…" What’s the age for chariot horses to be ready? Five? In the Roman world. I think a lot of changes may be coming along that will actually help the horse, but it will I think, be much more of a sporting thing than anything else. – Yeah, to build on that, we’ve seen, there are more domestic horses around now than probably there ever have been in human history. I mean, they’re all over the place and we’ve found these new niches for them. Especially in the sport world, and also, equine therapy, hippotherapy, using horses as wonderful therapy animals. But then we’re seeing a decline in endangered breeds of domestic horses, or when we look at the draft breeds like your Suffolk Punches and your Shires and your Clydesdales, that again, were so formative for a period of human history with agriculture and with the early industrial revolution. I have a soft spot for draft horses. They are lovely. Don’t buy your kid a Shetland pony. Buy them a Clydesdale, if you really love that kid. (audience laughing) Shetlands are also great, but Shetland ponies. But because they’re big and they can require so much maintenance and they don’t transition always into the sport world and things like that. We are seeing these heritage breeds that were so important that are now declining. And there’s been a lot of push and a lot of advocacy to try and preserve these breeds because they’re wonderful and again, genetically important and historically important. – Yeah, I don’t know that anyone’s going to ship a horse into our traveled outer space, but just looking backwards, how recently it is that this like shift away from horses being central, it’s also good perspective to have, I mean, in doing research today, I talk to people who have, it’s like one or two degrees of separation from a horse. It’s not that far, like a grandfather or a cousin who has a farm. And that the use of horses, particularly in conflict areas where once your roads and infrastructures have disintegrated, it’s the all-terrain vehicle. So, there’s a lot of practicality to it that I could imagine in some future apocalyptic world. – [Carolyn] Solve the apocalypse, back to the horses. – Yeah, so if the apocalypse comes, horses are going to be totally fine. (audience laughing) – Horses, donkeys, and mules, there we go. In the right climate environments. – Yeah, I would just add that I think it’s such a shifting time for the human-horse relationship, but it’s not all directional. One genetic study came out which tried to quantify most of the changes in the horse genome. And it turns out that like 99% of the changes in contemporary horse genomes are like within the last maybe 300 or 400 years. And so our relationship with horses is changing a lot. Some of it is kind of weird. It’s like horses are being cloned for racing. And some of these, you know, some of it though looks a lot different. One of the things that I’ve seen a big movement with among my indigenous collaborators is recognition around conservation and protection and restoration of horses in terms of their social and ceremonial importance in everyone’s lives. And there are folks that are doing these really important things like commemorative rides or youth training programs and some of these things. And I just think it’s shifting in a lot of directions all at once. – And so just to add to that the idea that our relationship with horses isn’t fundamentally based on use. I think looking at the cave paintings and going back to that fascination with the sociality of horses and horse behavior, that fascination and symbolism probably preceded our training and domesticating and use of it. And that will probably persist. – [Attendee 7] I just wanted to, you know, the question was raised about where the future of the horse is. With the thoroughbred foal crop in North America, peaked at an annual registration of over 50,000 horses per year in the 1980s. And it has been declining ever since. Jockey Club, based on their reports of “mares bred” submissions recently projects that the foal crop for 2023 will be on the order of between 15,000 and 18,000. That’s down from 50,000 per year in the 1980s. And there’s been a similar decline, mainly with the racing breeds, like the standard breds, the racing quarter horses, as tracks are closing and as racing dates are declining. And I’ve kind of noticed that there’s two different groups of people. There’s people who are involved hands-on with horses who will continue to want to be involved with horses. But for the rest of the urban environment, they know more about pterodactyls than they do about horses. I’m not joking, and I don’t see a real strong future ahead, at least in North America with the registrations dropping and people becoming more and more distant from the horses in the everyday thing that we see. Because for most people, they don’t see them, they’re not around. – Yeah, I mean that is a fantastic point. And I think it reminds us that we have these patterns and waves and things that we follow through human history and a lot of us do live in urban settings and don’t have that — can’t walk outside our door and see horses there. But I think there’s also- the massive industry and involvement in the different racetracks and things like that. But we’re also seeing other things with different urban riding programs and the therapeutic programs. And I think we’re starting to see horses more as just pets as well. So there’s those shifts and those changes and definitely those declines, but then, as Will can speak to, outside of North America, if we want to look for those rays of hope, by looking to other cultural contexts as well, where the horse is still just as important as a cultural identity and sense of existence as ever, really. – Yeah, and like I said, even in North America, there are places where that trajectory feels a little different. So I think it all depends on perspective. Probably overall we’re not likely going back to everyone riding horses to work anytime soon. – I would like to point out, you could totally put a hitching rail outside of my office. There’s lots of grass there. I’ve been trying to get my department chair to get me a, you know, a… – But weren’t you saying there’s legal protections that you have to have a hitching rail in Calgary? – Well, so yeah, so Calgary, we’re cowboy land theoretically. Allegedly, on the one hand there’s a bylaw that requires businesses to have a hitching post outside, so you can tie your horse up, but on the other hand, there’s a bylaw saying you can’t ride horses through downtown Calgary anymore unless it’s like the Calgary Stampede parade. So I think that’s an excellent example of what you were saying, how on the one hand we’re seeing these declines in changes. But on the other hand, if you dig a little deeper, you can find something else. All right, let’s do one more in-person question and then jump back to online. – [Attendee 8] Okay, what is your most, any of you can answer please, your most favorite historical geek out moment? The thing that made you obsess about this? – Sinclair, do you want to start? – Yeah, sure. My first archaeological dig was in a Roman circus in Carthage, and that’s what really just created this fascination with charioteers and this entire industry. And that it just reached so deep into the empire. – [Carolyn] Does anyone else want to go? – So mine was also my first, well maybe not my first archaeological dig, but my first summer in Mongolia. For some reason I was on rock duty, they would just send me around to move piles of rocks and when I would finish the pile, they’d send me to another pile. (Carolyn laughing) And so I was getting a little frustrated with it and I asked, "Hey, you mind if I like excavate or something?" And the first one that I got to work with was a 2,500 year old frozen, you might, if you’re being generous with the term Scythian, call it a Scythian horse burial, it’s in Mongolia. But you know, that same time period and kind of some cultural parallels. Because of the frozen ground and how deep it was, it was very, very, extraordinarily well preserved. And I remember when we excavated off the cheek piece of the bridle was covered in gold, like these little gold argali sheep rams with a big curl. And I just remember the audible gasp just, "Ah". And for me that was the moment that I’ve never come back from. (All laughing) – I think it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but I think the thing that keeps me going with the topic are those little moments like Carolyn was pointing out, and Sinclair, you had a couple of those where you go beyond the historical document to that bond or relationship or like a — Well, reading Xenophon’s manuscript for the first time and realizing I could have read this when I first took a riding lesson and it would’ve been really helpful. Or stories of like a Spanish nobleman who, you know, records, “my horse really prefers garbanzo beans over something else.” (All laughing) Those are the tidbits that make go beyond the document to that relationship. – [Carolyn] Carol? – I was born with it. (All laughing) – I guess, yeah, mine was looking at a picture of a breed of horse, you know, the Pindos pony from modern Greece and then looking at the Parthenon relief horses and realizing, "Hey, they still look kind of similar." And then my brain went, “I could go to Greece and ride horses, and it’s research.” (audience laughing) And then it was, “I could go to Mongolia and ride horses. And it’s research.” And I mean, as funny as that is- as an ancient historian, so often we’re working with fragments… Not to say I feel like, "hey, I’m a Macedonian cavalryman," ’cause I’m not. But like I’m in a place on a horse, riding through the same spaces and the environment is the same. And having that as close as you can get to a personal experience. I think, yeah, that was the, “no going back.” (audience clapping)