What if horses were ponies

Ahem, they were. What you are positing is exactly what happened. Most if not all prehistoric wild horses were ponie-sized. When they were first domesticated in Central Asia they were too small to carry a man so they pulled war chariots instead and that's how they entered the Middle East. Then, further selection made them strong enough to be mounted.

Anyway, even if horses were extinct Middle Easterners would have donkeys to replace them. Up to the 19th century there were some decent breeds of running donkeys, too.

The What-If is not that horses become extinct but that they are too small to ride.

As you (and other) state small horses have lots of uses including pulling war chariots. If civilizations have chariots and wagons do they feel compelled in to find some animal to ride? I wouldn't think so.

Basically I meant the question to be what if civilizations had chariots but not cavalry.
 
Couldn't you use Camels instead?
I did mention camels in my first post.
I have read that ancient horses were basically the size of modern ponies, and that through selective breeding they increased in size. So I think if in ancient times horses were bred even smaller Humans would simply breed those or adopt another species as their riding and pulling animal of choice. Even donkeys perhaps bred to the size of a cloverdale!
The ancestors of the horse were small creatures. But that doesn't mean the modern heavy horse came about due to human breeding. European horses were far larger than those in Asia, probably due to the existence of the native forest horse which were closer to the modern draft horse in size. It's probably the crossing of heavy horses with light ones that produced the big 16 hand European riding horses. There is no indication that you can breed donkeys to enormous size.

Right though the killer of the Native Americans was mostly smallpox. The Spanish was smart in that they used divide and conquer very effectively but in the end it was smallpox that did in the Native Americans.
My point is the NA civilizations would not have these fundamental weaknesses had they had the horse. More domesticated animals mean more native diseases, which means more disease resistance. And who knows, maybe it would be the Americans who discovers Europe instead of the other way around.
The What-If is not that horses become extinct but that they are too small to ride.

As you (and other) state small horses have lots of uses including pulling war chariots. If civilizations have chariots and wagons do they feel compelled in to find some animal to ride? I wouldn't think so.

Basically I meant the question to be what if civilizations had chariots but not cavalry.
Actually it's more likely people rode horses before hitching them to wagons. Wagons require certain technologies, such as the wheel, and wood working. It also requires a culture sophisticated enough to have wagon makers. If people rode tamed horses bareback in prehistoric times, we would have no way of knowing since there would be no artifacts left, unlike wagon parts from a wagon using culture.
 
Actually it's more likely people rode horses before hitching them to wagons. Wagons require certain technologies, such as the wheel, and wood working. It also requires a culture sophisticated enough to have wagon makers. If people rode tamed horses bareback in prehistoric times, we would have no way of knowing since there would be no artifacts left, unlike wagon parts from a wagon using culture.

If that were the case, then you have to explain why the Indo-Europeans who first brought horses out of the steppes of Central Asia into the Middle East, Iran, and India between 2,000 BC and 1,500 BC were, without exception, chariot warriors and not cavalrymen. Indeed, there is really little to no evidence that cavalry was used prior to about 750 BC. Cavalry has so many advantages over chariotry...mobility, efficient use of manpower, cost to raise and equip...that there is no reason why the early Indo-Europeans, if they indeed had mastered the art of riding horses, would have chosen chariots over cavalry.

Incidentally, the chariot seems to have come into the middle east as a package with the composite bow. Cavalry archers armed with composite bows would have been much more efficient than chariotry armed with composite bows, had that been possible at the time. Obviously it wasn't.

Your argument that prehistoric horse-riders would have left no artifacts does not hold water, either. You would have pictorial representations and representations in sculpture, at the very least. Nothing like that has been found dated much prior to about 750BC.
 
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didn't horses have to be selectively bred up in size for quite some time to be ridden? Thus, the use of chariots first?
Yes. There is something about horse genes that has permitted them to be bred up in size whilst you can't do so for donkeys. You need the large horse so that you can sit in the control position, ie in the middle of the back and not on the rump.
 
Yes, but only good for pulling chariots until you have horse collars

This seems to be a good place to note that the significance of the horse collar is vastly overstated. The maximum load allowed by the horse collar was not too different from that allowed by Roman harnesses. Also, I fail to see the necessity of the horse colar for cavalry. Surely stirrups and saddles are the most needed technology?
 
This seems to be a good place to note that the significance of the horse collar is vastly overstated. The maximum load allowed by the horse collar was not too different from that allowed by Roman harnesses.
It is more significant than it first seems. You can't put a very good yoke on a horse so you in effect put a strap around its neck and it pulls with that half strangling itself in the process. A collar is different is that the horse is now pulling with its shoulders and can breath properly as it does so.

Also, I fail to see the necessity of the horse colar for cavalry. Surely stirrups and saddles are the most needed technology?
No need at all. What is important here is have a large enough mount that can take the weight of a rider sitting in the control position.
 
Surely stirrups and saddles are the most needed technology?

Stirrups were important for lance charges, but mounted archers could be effective without them (with, presumably, lots and lots of practice).

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Just as an exercise, let's try and imagine Mongols with small horses and chariots instead of ridable horses.

Could the terrain support chariots without roads? Probably, the Celts had chariots without benefit of roads.

Could they have built chariots if they had the materials? No reason they couldn't.

Could they get the materials for war chariots? Maybe not. Good chariots were made of lots of different materials gathered from many places. To have good chariots you need good trade networks. This is what civilizations have, but is not nomad's strong point.

Chariots are expensive. You need the material, skilled craftsmen, driver, warrior, runners, support. This is the type of tech that civilizations can have, but barbarians - not so much.

Would the Mongols still even want horses? Sure. They give milk, meat, leather. They pull wagons. You can hunt from a chariot.

But Mongols would probably end up with more of a hierarchy – few elite with chariots, the rest move on foot.

If China grows weak then the Mongols might still take over, but they could not do the sort of sweep through Persia and Russia that they did OTL.
 
Stirrups were important for lance charges, but mounted archers could be effective without them (with, presumably, lots and lots of practice).

______

Just as an exercise, let's try and imagine Mongols with small horses and chariots instead of ridable horses.
From the point of view of a nomad a chariot is better than no chariot. Whilst a horse is even better (less capital intensive in materials and better use of man power are just two points), a chariot is still serviceable.
 
wouldn't the idea of riding cattle eventually become popular? They were already widespread and large enough... they'd never be as fast as a riding horse, but selective breeding could make them more agile...
 
It is more significant than it first seems. You can't put a very good yoke on a horse so you in effect put a strap around its neck and it pulls with that half strangling itself in the process. A collar is different is that the horse is now pulling with its shoulders and can breath properly as it does so.


That is actually a myth. See the work of Spruytte, among others.

As to the subject of the thread, I actually think that - given the immense damage wrought by horse nomads - the absence of a ridable horse would be a boon for civilization. Consider the devastation wrought by the Mongols alone.

The New World civilizations are not really a good counterexample, due to their other disadvantages - smaller land area leading to fewer civilizations and lower biodiversity, which in turn led to a relative lack of domesticatable crops and animals, etc. Diamond may be sloppy, but he is probably at least partially right on this one.
 
wouldn't the idea of riding cattle eventually become popular? They were already widespread and large enough... they'd never be as fast as a riding horse, but selective breeding could make them more agile...

The digestive system of cattle dictate that they must just stand around for long periods of time. Even if you bred cattle who were agile when not digesting a meal, armies on the march would travel much slower than horse based armies.


. . .As to the subject of the thread, I actually think that - given the immense damage wrought by horse nomads - the absence of a ridable horse would be a boon for civilization. Consider the devastation wrought by the Mongols alone.
. . .

Civilizations would be more stable but also more stagnant.
 
The digestive system of cattle dictate that they must just stand around for long periods of time. Even if you bred cattle who were agile when not digesting a meal, armies on the march would travel much slower than horse based armies.

Cattle can move around just fine... ever hear about cattle drives in the old west? They don't have the sheer stamina for galloping nonstop like a horse, but without horses, cattle are the next best thing people got. If they had been selectively bred for the last umpteen thousand years like horses were, chances are you'd have a cow that was longer legged, faster, and with more stamina than others... they still wouldn't be as fast or hardy as a modern horse, but they'd do...
 
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