A world without horses

Now, it's nowhere stated that there is such a specific ecological niche as "large, strong-backed, docile herd animal". There are other animals that can be ridden, but only the horses stuck. Not even in places devoid of horses other animals were adapted for riding, save perhaps for donkeys and elephants, both of which cause their own problems.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Horses were first, without them, it would have taken probably another 1,000 years or so, but humans would have broken another animal (noting that the original horse would not have been docile, docility is not a natural trait).

Also, scrapping horses is only really possible if you remove the Bering Land Bridge, which also means no bears, wolves or other land-based caniformia (badgers, weasels, etc.).

How on earth is the Bering bridge in any way crucial for the existence of equids? We're play-pretending here, we can have all the bears and weasels we want even if no equids ever developed or no equids ever developed to be larger than a whippet. (But true enough, imagining a world without the influence of the Bering bridge would be quite interesting as well.)

On docility, horses have always been an intelligent, highly social herd animal with complex yet solid social structure, and a built-in need to ensure smooth herd interaction by respecting individuals higher in the pecking order. So even without docility that's a lot of qualities that made horses quite ideal for human use:

• intelligence means they can me taught a lot of tricks, including recognising physical, visual or auditory cues to perform those tricks (riding at its very simplest requires at least four different tricks)
• high social need means that they can and do bond with humans even if they had access to equine company
• complexity of social structure means a horse is capable of conceiving a difference between a nasty boss and a nice one (although he will give way to both, he'll be happy to allow the nice boss near him and will trust his judgement in weird situations more)
• need for smooth herd interaction means the horse has a high level of understanding and sending visual and other cues — such sensitivity makes it easier for them to learn human's cues for tricks

For most parts (in my personal experience), bovines have these properties as well, although they would probably behave more like donkeys in their tendency to weigh their benefits and motivation more than horses. Thus, usable steed material. However, the modern bovine is a great deal less agile as the horse, which makes for a smaller range of body language and possibly a lesser capability to read such on other animals such as humans as well. Then again, the aurochs was a lot more agile than our stumpy friend Buttercup.

The most negative aspect of equids in human use would naturally be their extreme sensitivity to flee and not look back. Bovines have a natural defense on their heads and are not as quick to flee.

For one more point of comparison, horses with their tiny little stomachs have the need to eat pretty much around the clock. This makes for long days at the stable, but on the bright side, once that food is down it stays down. They're built to be on their legs for almost all times, and only lie down for some deeper rest when the circumstances allow.

Bovines on the other hand hoover a mass of grass into their rumen, then retire to a safer place where they can lie down and ruminate the living daylights of their swag. In other words, bovines have the need to lie down a lot. Rumination is possible to do in a standing position also, but bovines haven't been meant to stay up nearly as much as equines.

edited 29th May '12 12:55:58 AM by peccantis

The original idea is for equids (and camelids) not to get to Europe, not necessarily for them never to exist.

edited 29th May '12 1:50:27 AM by MattII

okay... Then how do you feel about onagers and zebras? They developed in Asia and Africa whereas horses came via Bering from the Americas right?

As a random note, I'm starting to like the idea of whippet-sized ultra light three-toed horses o.o probably forest-dwellers too. Or if steppe-dwelling, then really really fast.

Already out, no equids full-stop, and that's got to mean in all of Eurasia, because there's no convenient boundary to stop them crossing from Asia to Europe. Of course you could say that equids just never evolve, or you could close down the Bering Land Bridge.

No: My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic

edited 8th Jun '12 10:45:49 PM by Natasel

Don't worry, it'll probably still exist, but with fallow deer instead of ponies.

My Little Fallow Deer, Friendship is Magic doesn't seem to roll from the tounge as well....

Anyway, there was a point in time in America where there was no horses. Apparently, the Native Americans hunted them all to extinction according to fossil records, and horses were not re-introduced until the Spaniards brought some with them, and then promptly lost them in America.

The Native American, pre-European World, would probably be a good picture of a world without horses.

Not much as much travel or cargo moving but all in all, not so bad.

edited 8th Jun '12 11:34:25 PM by Natasel

Oh you wouldn't need to add both bits, it'd be just My Little Fallow or My Little Deer.

As for following the Amerinds, not flamin' likely, it's generally accepted that we domesticated the cow in about 8000 BC, while we only followed with the dromedary in 4000 BC (skipping the donkey in 5000 BC and the Horse in 4000 BC), and followed that up with the reindeer in 3000 BC, so even without the horse we're not going to be lacking in draft-beasts.

edited 8th Jun '12 11:46:16 PM by MattII

Then why the heck did the horse end up the mount of choice anyway?

I for one think that raging bulls, iron shod, steel horned and each over a ton of mass could work as a better mount for a knight than a horse.

Well camels were only available in certain areas (sometimes where horses weren't), cattle didn't have the speed to be really good for fast movement, and we got horses before reindeer.

As for knights, it was probably partly cultural, and partly developmental, back in the 10th and 11th centuries when knights were starting out, they wore mostly chain-mail and some small plates, and so the horses of the day were fine, while the cattle of the day weren't really fast enough. Over time the armour got more extensive and heavier, and so the horse was bred up, while cattle were not bred down because development was slow, and so the weight-bearing capacity wasn't needed, and by the time it was (in the 14th and 15th centuries), there were horses around that could bear the strain, while cattle would need a couple of centuries of breeding to really be suitable.

Yeah, well today we've got cows so big, heavy and (presumably) strong they can probaly ram a small car and win.

Shorter legs may mean less speed/agility but also lower center of mass and combine that with greater weight (I don't think horses were bred for size specifically, just big enough to be usefull) because more mass means more beef ), and you have a wrecking ball that you can BBQ .

Seeing bulls in rodeos gives me a rough idea of how those things can move if it came down to it, the only question I have is are they trainable? They've got horns and all but can they be taught to horn fight with is, so to speak?

As the guy who originally started this thread way back, I might just add that this wasn't about alternative history, but rather about a fantasy story taking place in a Eurasia-like continent. Any thoughts about the Bering Land Bridge can be thoroughly scrapped, as this continent doesn't have that kind of geographic relation to an America analogue.

That being said, I am still working on this world, and while I think I said a few pages back that I'll probably be scrapping camelids as well, I have been thinking about bovines. It does appear reindeer, while partially domesticable, are very likely to prove too much of a hassle to be tamed and bred to fill in all the purposes humans have used horses for. I am not up to speed on cattle, though. We can all recognize their capacity for mayhem and trampling and gore. But surely cow brains differ in significant ways for horse brains, or, to be more precise, their social intelligence differs? I am just assuming this; anyone who has experience raising cattle or horses or preferably both might enlighten me. Furthermore, how hard would it be to breed, say, an aurochs into something you could ride? Looking at how we've fucked up canis familiaris in a few thousand years, it seems that phenotypic variability through breeding is pretty broad. Are there some hidden barriers I've not contemplated?

All this would be valuable stuff to know!

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And certainly a knight on horseback, but they didn't breed them that big when knights were around.

And face that against pike squares and you have beef kebab.

Don't trust rodeos, if you want to see how well they'd do run them as fast as they'll go until they're exhausted, then measure the time it took to exhaust them, and their top speed.

So what you basically want is a world where humans are the biggest animals around, because if there is anything even as big as a pony, rest assured we'll find some way to turn it into a riding beast.

Not much effort was put in in our world because we already had horses, but with those and most other beasts out of the way in your world I suspect humans would have knuckled down to the task and turned reindeer (or red deer) into a species almost as widely varied as horses.

Large size, human-length gestation, and generally only one calf at a time. Oh it could probably be done, but it wouldn't be easy, especially since you're trying to turn an animal into something it's not.

Societally, the aristocracy will come down of their high horse, but only partially. Seeing as oxen cavalry just doesn't have the speed to shock infantry the elite, horse riding, well armored elite combatants wouldn't develop. Light infantry would become more common as there aren't any horses to chase them down.

But what about Heavy Cow Cavalry?

Some of them even RAM into each other (headbutting) as a contest to get mates.

An animal like that has got to be able to do some serious damage to sheild wall or pike formation once its been properly trained and armored.

Furthermore, how hard would it be to breed, say, an aurochs into something you could ride? Looking at how we've fucked up canis familiaris in a few thousand years, it seems that phenotypic variability through breeding is pretty broad. Are there some hidden barriers I've not contemplated?

• Large size, human-length gestation, and generally only one calf at a time. Oh it could probably be done, but it wouldn't be easy, especially since you're trying to turn an animal into something it's not.

Well horses have a 11-month gestation :P And twin foals are both rarer and have it worse than bovine twins. Also I'd like to know what you mean by "trying to turn an animal into something it's not"... All animal breeding can be defined like that. But yes, the progress will be rather slow:

• the generation turnover is slow and largely limited to single offspring, so even the most advanced breeding needs a lot of time to have visible progress
• if the species is in wide use, without strong regulation the greatest progress is limited to only a small part of the population while the rest remains basically undeveloped
• -> there will be a large contrast between the quality of the common animal and the one that comes from bloodlines bred systematically

Then of course there's the fact that with aurochs, the sexual dimorphism is rather strong: cows are a lot smaller and weaker than the bulls. It may be that cows are demoted merely to recreation and perhaps beasts of burden and bulls are the riding animals. These two factors combined can mean that the bull's part in breeding gets overestimated and the cow's underestimated. Which will also slow the progress of breeding down. Of course, this can be redeemed with better overall knowledge of breeding theory

Considering how aurochs were 155–180/135-155 cm tall and weighed (bulls) about 700 kg, I have no doubt that it would make a rideable animal after domestication. With their long legs, they would also ride rather differently from our modern day Bertha. Via controlled breeding (and even more so with a number of lucky beneficial dominant inheritance mutations) they could well be made even larger.

edited 9th Jun '12 6:45:56 AM by peccantis

Well horses started out as pretty good riding beasts, so to turn them into animals that could carry knights only really involved upsizing them. With cows though, you're trying to change the proportions, make them longer in the leg, less heavily built, and possibly shorter in the body, like turning a beagle into a greyhound, but on a big, slow scale. Probably better to start out with reindeer/red deer, which have closer to the ideal proportion, which have better proportions for a riding beast.

Well not really. Aurochs were pretty highlegged (almost as tall legs as chest), and their bodies were not proportionally as long and deep as the modern cattle.

edited 9th Jun '12 3:23:32 PM by peccantis

Nah, the horses were horrible and couldn't be ridden horseback. We had to breed them over a long period of time to achieve horseback riding. And, to note how rare a riding horse really is, archaeologists working with biologists are sure that there's only ONE place where all our horses came from.

For biological niche point about horses, you can have horses in nature but they don't have to be domestic-able (okay I don't know the word). Those traits are unrelated. In particular to have a horse you can raise and herd, it needs to respect a ranking system and not runaway like antelope (and there's a few other factors but those are the big ones). Those two points lacking in horses automatically makes them balls for raising (to the point of being nearly impossible, like how we can't raise zebras). Actually Zebras are an excellent example. If all our horses were like zebras, then we have no horses.

I think I'd have to agree with the massive reduction in power with respect to nomads. Walking nomads are notoriously easy to devastate, allowing city-states to be far more crappy before being overwhelmed by barbarian hordes. The Roman Empire, for instance, only started failing militarily when their massed infantry ranks were being overwhelmed by barbarian light cavalry. That shift in military focus was one of the factors that led to them being trounced. No cavalry, then the Roman Empire could last somewhat longer before corruption ultimately did it in.

That said, horse-based units aren't entirely necessary to bring down empires. For instance, when Tang Dynasty was on its last legs, the Tibetan Empire went in and burned down their capital. But the Tibetans don't have huge mounted armies. They mostly used infantry.

But you know, everything swings in all sorts of ways. If the Romans didn't have as much trouble with the barbarians could they have achieved more? Probably not. Actually, I think lack of horses is definitely a major slow down in social development. As horrible as barbarian invasions were, as wrecking balls to established state-empires, those state-empires fell because they sucked. No horses allows them to suck even more before collapsing.

Minor note, for some reasons, the Romans did NOT (and perhaps no one else at the time) think of using stirrups.

Those little additions to the saddle made it MUCH easier to ride a horse, to the point where amatures could get on a tame horse and (sort of) ride with relative ease but a saddle without a stirrup is basically a pillow seat for your horse and ass (pun! ) to prevent briusing and chaffing.

The lack of stirrup increased the difficulty bar of being able to ride, limited your ability to grip the horse via legs, balance yourself on a horse, and have a hand free to use instead of grabbing the horse's mane.

Basically, only people born in a horse culture (like nomands) where you can learn and practice pretty much from birth had a chance of adopting wide spread horse riding.

edited 9th Jun '12 10:10:43 PM by Natasel

Agreed, but even they'd still be second-rate compared to horses, or deer, red deer and reindeer are closer proportionally to a horse than the aurochs was.

Er, do you have any idea how dumb that sounds? Any animal is domesticatable givemn sufficient time and effort, ant the only reason we didn't do it a whole lot is because we didn't often consider it worthwhile, horses fitted the bill quite well. Take them away, and we'll go and find something else to break in and ride.

Hannibal and Arminius would like a word.

People, humans are adaptable and intelligent, don't think that removing horses is going to screw up cavalry, because it won't, we'll just find sowething else to break and ride, if it isn't an equine it'll be a camelid, and if not that then a cervine, and if that doesn't work we'll breed up an antelope.

edited 10th Jun '12 12:31:16 AM by MattII

True, the main reason why zebras haven't been domesticated (there have been a few instances of taming zebras and using them successfully for riding/driving) is probably because we already had horses. Wikipedia on zebra domestication

And now, a species I believe hasn't been mentioned yet... ostrich.

edited 10th Jun '12 3:53:20 AM by peccantis

CHOCOBOO!!!