Horses untameable: no cavalry

Proctol

Banned
WI the horse was not a tameable creature ie it's wild nature would absolutely not allow it to be broken in sufficiently to allow it to be harnessed for ploughing (horses for ploughing were mainly used by the Anglos in the UK & N.America; the rest of the world used oxen) or to carry a human on its back, like an untameable wild mustang? (It was the conquistadores that brought the horse to the Americas).

Without horses for cavalry, the history of warfare, from Ancient Egypt to the Russian cavalry of WW2, would have been totally different. Much more use would have been made of camels, donkeys & elephants, but no substitute for the horse. What other major differences from OTL if horses were only good for food (horse meat has the flavour of a tasty but tough steak, & is not too appetising)? Would the horse by now be extinct even? Would it have spurred an earlier development of steam transport?
 
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Hmm. I can think of very few animals that if raised by humans, and for successive generations, wouldn't eventually be domesticated. There are other animals that could be substituted for horses, and others eventually totally bred to replace them. Granted I wouldn't exactly advocate domesticating tigers - as both Siegfried and Roy have found out, there are always potentialities for problems.

A draft animal would eventually be found. Speed in warfare is highly prized. How about chariots pulled by domesticated gazelle?

One interesting point would be that in such an ATL the horse will probably be slaughtered for food and available just as beef or chicken on restaurant menus.
 
David S Poepoe said:
Hmm. I can think of very few animals that if raised by humans, and for successive generations, wouldn't eventually be domesticated. There are other animals that could be substituted for horses, and others eventually totally bred to replace them. Granted I wouldn't exactly advocate domesticating tigers - as both Siegfried and Roy have found out, there are always potentialities for problems.

A draft animal would eventually be found. Speed in warfare is highly prized. How about chariots pulled by domesticated gazelle?

One interesting point would be that in such an ATL the horse will probably be slaughtered for food and available just as beef or chicken on restaurant menus.

That's actually extremely not true, and the distribution of domesticable animals is one of the primary determinants of whether or not civilzation could develop. For instance, a great deal of effort was put into domesticating zebras when Europeans began to colonize Africa. Although other than the stripes they llok the same as horses, they have a further differing trait of biting anyone who comes near them and not letting go.

If horses had not been available, there were substitutes available for agriculture and transport, but not war, so you would not see barbarian hordes smashing civilization from time to time.
 
Three points:

Firstly, indeed, the Spanish brought horses to the Americas. But they'd been there before. It's just that, along with the wooly mammoth and many other large creatures, they got eaten by the first amerindians.

Secondly, more important to humanity than cavalry and chariots is horses as draft animals. Draft animals do two things. They let you plough up more land, which lets you produce more food, and thus have more children, and build up enough of a population to have cities, and specialised professions like blacksmith and scribe - that is, civilisation. They also let you cart about more stuff for trade. One village is next to a load of marble, another has fertile soil; they swap quarried marble for food.

Of course, humans can act as draft animals, as in the Aztec and Inca empires. But those civilisations only advance so far. For example, the existence of draft animals give real use to the wheel. Production of the wheel leads to thinking about how else to use lever-energy, such as in mills, water pumps, etc. Again, humans can power these, but it's a matter of scale.

Draft animals thus give you the food, and the cartage ability, which builds civilisations and empires.

Thirdly, the lack of horses in Europe and Asia - which could come up not from their being untameable, but simply from their being eaten, as in the Americas - would make quite a difference to those area's histories. What of the Mongols, the Huns and so on? The great Eurasian steppe is full of stories of one nomadic nation conquering another in China, which leads to a horse-mounted nation moving west, conquering another, who moves west, and so on - until a horde comes crashing into a Roman, or Byzantine, or Abbasid Empire, and destroys or weakens it.

Without horse-bound barbarians, these great empires become more sustainable; or, if you prefer, less sustainable, as the lack of a constant threat to keep them strong leads to their earlier decadence? In any case, it's bound to have some effect...
 
David S Poepoe said:
Hmm. I can think of very few animals that if raised by humans, and for successive generations, wouldn't eventually be domesticated. There are other animals that could be substituted for horses, and others eventually totally bred to replace them....A draft animal would eventually be found. Speed in warfare is highly prized. How about chariots pulled by domesticated gazelle?

Actually, there is a lot of reason to think that those animals which haven't been domesticated over the past 10,000 years are probably unable to be domesticated for genetic reasons. Otherwise, Africans would surely have domesticated the zebra, for example. Native Americans, who never had the horse or any other really adequate draft animal, never domesticated the moose or the elk or the bison, all of which, superficially, would seem good candidates for such a role. I doubt that gazelle could be domesticated for that reason. But chariots were, originally, pulled by teams of onagers (wild asses). There is no reason to think they would not have continued to be pulled by these animals.
 
For instance, a great deal of effort was put into domesticating zebras when Europeans began to colonize Africa. Although other than the stripes they llok the same as horses, they have a further differing trait of biting anyone who comes near them and not letting go.
True fact: Zebra bites are number one cause for injuries of zoo keepers.
 

Redbeard

Banned
Proctol said:
WI the horse was not a tameable creature ie it's wild nature would absolutely not allow it to be broken in sufficiently to allow it to be harnessed for ploughing (horses for ploughing were mainly used by the Anglos in the UK & N.America; the rest of the world used oxen) or to carry a human on its back, like an untameable wild mustang? (It was the conquistadores that brought the horse to the Americas).

Horses were used for ploughing in Scandinavia and N. Germany too. AFAIK in all of northern Europe.

For ploughing oxens would be a reasonable substitute, but I guess everything on land, be it transport, commerce or warfare will go a little slower. Land Empires will not be as big, but those connected by sea and/or big rivers have a relative advantage. Horseback barbarians are just shortlegged tribesmen.

The Grand National Steeplechase will be a quite different event :D

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
Wouldn't, given time, another species be bred to fill the role of horses? After al dogs have been bred for size or strength to pull carts etc. Why couldn't a dog be bred to pull chariots, or a lighter, faster type of cattle?
 
David S Poepoe said:
One interesting point would be that in such an ATL the horse will probably be slaughtered for food and available just as beef or chicken on restaurant menus.
According to my aunt, who lived in Brussels for some time, in the grocery stores, the horse meat aisle is usually larger than the beef aisle.

I'd say that civilized societies wouldn't be too much worse off, since there's plenty of substitutes for horses, for draft and load bearing. Militarily, they'll be worse off, but so will everyone else (especially the barbarians), so its no difference. There are plenty of reasons why there were no rampaging hordes that destroyed civilization atop donkeys. Temperment, top speed (IIRC), etc. Civ's close enough to a desert could be in trouble, I could see Camel riding nomads filling the gap, but that's only in the desert, really (unless we adapt Camels to other enviroments).

Imagine pegasus as a fly camel or donkey. Thats amusing.
 
Cattle and donkeys will be the major draft animals available to Eurasian civilizations (and in other parts of the world if one Eurasian culture or another starts settling overseas). They might be more intensively bred into more different varieties than in OTL. Onagers might remain domesticated in the Middle East (in OTL they were abandoned in favor of horses, donkeys, and mules, which were all easier to handle, even the donkeys). I'm not sure if either could be bred into an effective animal for warfare, but somebody might try to. Once domesticated, camels will be used more extensively in any desert or semi-desert areas, and they might very well be adapted to Mediterranean and steppe climates as both pack and war animals, filling at least part of the role played by horses in OTL. Overall, agricultural civilizations in Eurasia will be stronger without the threat from horse-mounted steppe nomads - I doubt that any alternative animal would be as effective for war in such a variety of climates as horses.
 
Tell that to the Russians

"Actually, there is a lot of reason to think that those animals which haven't been domesticated over the past 10,000 years are probably unable to be domesticated for genetic reasons. Otherwise, Africans would surely have domesticated the zebra, for example. Native Americans, who never had the horse or any other really adequate draft animal, never domesticated the moose or the elk or the bison, all of which, superficially, would seem good candidates for such a role. I doubt that gazelle could be domesticated for that reason. But chariots were, originally, pulled by teams of onagers (wild asses). There is no reason to think they would not have continued to be pulled by these animals."

The Russians have domesticated European elk (we'd call it a moose) and foxes in the last half century. Neither matches the characteristics of what is typically considered a domesticable species. All it takes is a concentrated, scientific effort over a few dozen generations, and many species that would seem to be unlikely candidates can be domesticated more thoroughly than most breeds of housecat. Many mammal species in Eurasia and the Americas probably fall into this category.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a different issue. The dominant species there evolved alongside early hominids. They had the opportunity to develop instinctive responses to the presence of bipedal apes, long before said apes had become capable of domesticating anything. I still think it would be possible to domesticate them, but it would probably take so long that more direct forms of genetic engineering would be easier.
 
Admiral Matt said:
"Actually, there is a lot of reason to think that those animals which haven't been domesticated over the past 10,000 years are probably unable to be domesticated for genetic reasons. Otherwise, Africans would surely have domesticated the zebra, for example. Native Americans, who never had the horse or any other really adequate draft animal, never domesticated the moose or the elk or the bison, all of which, superficially, would seem good candidates for such a role. I doubt that gazelle could be domesticated for that reason. But chariots were, originally, pulled by teams of onagers (wild asses). There is no reason to think they would not have continued to be pulled by these animals."

The Russians have domesticated European elk (we'd call it a moose) and foxes in the last half century. Neither matches the characteristics of what is typically considered a domesticable species. All it takes is a concentrated, scientific effort over a few dozen generations, and many species that would seem to be unlikely candidates can be domesticated more thoroughly than most breeds of housecat. Many mammal species in Eurasia and the Americas probably fall into this category.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a different issue. The dominant species there evolved alongside early hominids. They had the opportunity to develop instinctive responses to the presence of bipedal apes, long before said apes had become capable of domesticating anything. I still think it would be possible to domesticate them, but it would probably take so long that more direct forms of genetic engineering would be easier.


Unless I am wrong, the "domesticated" moose is more akin to the "domesticated" bison raised in the US for food. There is a big difference between raising a large and dangeorus herd animal for food on ranches and training it to function as a draft animal or horse-substitute.

However, we must not oversimplify the situation surrounding American animals. Just because they were not domesticated does not mean they couldn't be. Until human population densities and social organizations reached the level at which it becomes necessaryto spend generations to capture, train, raise, and domesticate large captive herds it's probably more efficient to simply hunt and eat them in the wild. Only in a few locations in the Americas did population levels and social complexity reach the level of the middle eastern neolithic (Mexico, central America, and Peru)- and by then most of the good candidates (horse, maybe elephant, bison ) had been hunted to extinctiion or near extinction.
 
No Arab hordes and so no Islam.
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I heard OTL of some people in Canada or USA breaking in moose to pull a sledge or wheeled vehicle.
 
I don't know about the latter. I read a while back that when the Arabs first showed up in Spain they were riding donkeys.

Which makes sense, really, since donkeys are so much more attuned to desert life. The Muslims only started breeding "Arabian horses" once they controlled Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc, and could afford the water.

@zoomar - It's been forever since I read it, but I seem to remember there being some concrete change in the animals' behavior. I'll see if I can find some info.
 
Aurauchs and elephants

We domesticated the wild aurauch to breed them into cattle. It is possible to breed the cattle even smaller, to the size of a sheep. This was done in the Shetland islands, and in India.
There were dwarf elephants on some Mediterranean islands. Imagine elephants as draft animals. Dwarf wooly mamoths from Wrangel island instead of horses? Instead of sheep?
We could attempt to breed bigger goats for riding and draft animals.
 
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