SHOWCASING THE WORLD’S FINEST PROPERTIES AND THE STORIES BEHIND THEM
Horses somehow, mysteriously, remain our point of connection back to older times. They are majestic, strange and always at the border of terrifying. What are we to make of them, before we lose them? (Avi Theret/Unsplash)
Let me lay my premise before you: the bond between humans and horses ranks among the most transformative relationships our species has ever experienced. The history of it pre-dates science. No animal has shouldered civilization quite like the horse. Yet the way we regard these strange-looking beasts has changed over the millennia.
First we feared them (as we feared every new creature that trundled across our tundra, and horses looked weird even by prehistoric standards). Next we revered them (during our Greco-Roman mythical gods phase). Finally we reared them (as useful tools, transport support, sources of entertainment).
Let us conveniently conflate the first of those two stages into the shape of Pegasus – winged messenger, carrier of thunderbolts for Zeus – we find the horse being granted a revered place in the pantheon of ancient Greece. Similar positions became available for Uchchaihshravas, the seven-headed flying king of horses in Hindu lore, and for Blóðughófi, steed of the Norse god Freyr. Stable-deities all. On the other hand, according horses mythic status may just have been a down-to-earth way of thanking them collectively for their sterling work on the battlefields of the day.
Mercury, god of messengers, astride the wingéd Pegasus. (Alamy)
As to the third stage of taming and rearing the equine beast, once man found they were willing learners when apples and carrots were involved, so began the reversal of horse as god into horse as beast of burden. Just before we go there, let’s briefly also mention a lesser known equine role. That of horse as theatrical symbol of political power.
The Roman Emperor Caligula had a horse. Did it receive special treatment? Only if being attended by 18 servants, dining on oats sprinkled with gold flakes and drinking water laced with powdered pearls seems special. Rumors spread that Caligula intended to make him a Consul in the Senate. That was a joke of course, the horse was only made a priest. The whole elaborate performance was contrived by Caligula to satirize the Senate, as if to say a dumb animal could do their job. Anyway, good to finally learn the birth of the pantomime horse…
Asia Secunda Pars Terrae in Forma Pegasi (Asia in the Form of Pegasus) put to work again, this time carrying the continents. The image comes from an illustrated book of 1581, the Itinerarium, by the German pastor and theological commentator Heinrich Bünting, who rewrote the bible as a travelogue. The oddity of merging Christian doctrine and classical mythology is surely a deep nosebag just waiting for modern conspiracy theorists. (Alamy)
Today, the relationship is somewhat more mundane. As automobiles motored into the early 20th century, humans effectively retired their most loyal co-workers of the past millennia. For most of us, horses just chew grass on the fringes of modern life. ‘Twas not always so.
Historians point to the Eurasian steppes around 4,000 BCE as the cradle of horse domestication. Early peoples found that corralling these powerful animals was more efficient than chasing them for food. Other advantages quickly materialized in the form of haulage capacity, quicker travel, longer travel and as a new weapon of war. From Mesopotamia to Egypt, chariots added firepower and speed (as groundbreaking in their time as modern tanks). Horses gave the Spanish conquistadors a psychological and tactical edge on their killing incursions into Mesoamerica and beyond. The Mongols conquered swathes of territory using calvary units known as minghans.
As thousands of paintings of rural life prove, up to the mid-1800s, nothing much disturbed the centrality of horses to human existence.
But horses are peaceable beasts. Through early networks like the Silk Road, horses bridged cultural and economic gaps. Information accelerated. Across the American Frontier of the 19th century, the Pony Express raced mail and news from Missouri to California in just 10 days, with riders swapping exhausted mounts every 10 to 15 miles.
At a pastoral pace, farming became more efficient. Robust Clydesdales, Shires and Percherons were bred to pull heavy plows through stubborn soil. And, as thousands upon thousands of paintings of rural life prove, up to the mid-1800s nothing much disturbed the centrality of horses to human existence.
And then, in a puff of smoke, everything changed.
If not mythical, at least legendary. Edging ever-closer to our times with vital news to impart, the ponies bred as messengers knock Mercury off his cloud. (Notice, in so many equine illustrations, the eyes are always looking at you. Check the statue of Pegasus again.) (Shutterstock Editorial)
While the Industrial Revolution eventually came to run on coal and steam and fierce ambition, in its early decades it also still relied on horses. Carts and canal barges loaded with goods needed those heavy fetlocks. In Victorian London, 300,000 nimbler beasts crammed the capital’s narrow streets every day, prompting scribblers from the popular prints to predict that the city could soon be under nine feet of manure. The parping automobile would soon solve this crisis, by replacing one form of pollution with another.
So what now for the noble horse, after centuries of servitude? Out to grass. Outside of passive ceremonial roles in traditional civic events, their public presence seems only to involve the entertainment arenas of horse-racing, equestrian events and rodeos. Hunting and hacking remain minority niche pursuits.
Yet talk to people who do own horses and you’ll get a different response. They’ll likely draw your attention to the 1.5 million owners in the U.S. and the 4.6 million people in horse-related businesses. They’ll tell you that in 2023 the tally of 6.65 million horses in America didn’t include the 82,000 wild horses roaming the land. Nor the nearly 20 million horses that live, breathe and snort in Central and South America.
That’s how you tie a lasso. Here two cowboys of today on a cattle drive, Montrose, Colorado do their dusty work. (Shutterstock)
They’ll also want you to remember the working ranches where horses are still integral to the live management of cattle droves. They may squirm a little at any mention of dude ranch weekends when nostalgia addicts swap pressed business suits for rhinestoned Nudie Suits and drive their Porsches back to town with aches in places they didn’t know they had. But all in all, you’ll be set right about things.
How long the cultural resonance persists between the human and the horse depends on how far from history the pace of progress takes us. For all we know about AI today, tomorrow it may be humans suffering redundancy.
In which case, next time you spot one of those magnificent creatures grazing in a pasture, it might be timely to recall they once were distant partners from an age when human ambition cantered along with an equine grace, helping forge the world we enjoy for now.
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