It also makes sense that the horses would have been ridden. Riding does not require accoutrements like saddles and bridles. All you need to do is stay on the horse’s back. If you can survive one or two wild rides, you’re on your way. In any case, riding is part of our natural-history heritage. In Africa, I have often seen baboon infants riding on the backs of willing adults, reminding me of Huxley’s funny illustration of Eohomo riding Eohippus. On the other hand, domestication of horses would have been a bit more complicated if by “domestication” you mean the act of controlling breeding in the modern sense of the phrase—leading the stallion to the mare.
The conventional archaeological belief that riding and domestication began in the east and spread to Europe annoys many of the Galician scientists I met. They believe that both riding and domestication of horses were independently invented in their own region. Riding, they believe, was a natural stage in the progression of the horse-human partnership from the hunting of horses for meat to the routine use of horses in village life. Unfortunately, they can’t point to any firm direct evidence, other than DNA reports of the genes of Spanish horses present in many modern horse breeds.
There does exist, though, some interesting post-Pleistocene art that clearly shows horseback riders. Their feet almost reach the ground, so we know that their mounts were quite small, probably about the size of the Garranos I had seen. This art, however, is not found in caves. The depictions are out in the open air, and consist of carvings made into rocks and onto the sides of cliffs. There are a lot of examples all over Europe of open-air rock etchings, but most are strange symbols that scientists cannot interpret. There are circles within circles, crosshatched patterns that look like checkerboards, or simple X marks and sets of parallel lines. Some researchers theorize that these symbols may be very early precursors to writing—not writing itself, but a form of signposting or branding, as in “Kilroy was here” or “This land belongs to these people.”
These geometric signs are common, but a second style of rock carving I saw with Lagos and Ransom is extremely rare, existing in Galicia but not elsewhere. These are certain kinds of petroglyphs that feature horses. This post-Pleistocene horse art, however, is quite unlike Pleistocene horse art. There is certainly nothing like the majestic Vogelherd horse. Pleistocene art focuses on the elegance of the natural horse, but this Holocene Galician art shows the horse as a tool of humans. People are now at the center of the action; horses are now animals to be subdued and used. They are objects of manipulation. The horse as wary watcher, as playful sprite, or as a member of a glorious gathering of large mammals had become a thing of the past. Replacing the Pleistocene’s “art of tenderness” is an art that extols elitism. Those possessing riding horses are now in charge. As the British archaeologist Richard Bradley has observed, horses at this time symbolize nature subdued by humanity.
Ransom, Lagos, and I spent several days visiting these open-air sites. One scene shows a rider sitting comfortably in the middle of the horse’s back. Researchers used to believe that people did not learn the correct seat on a horse’s back until only a few thousand years ago (on Greek urns, riders are shown sitting too far back to be well balanced), but these Galician riders look quite secure. Their horses are not saddled, suggesting that saddles had not yet been invented. In one scene, the rider has reins in his hands that fly through the air over the horse’s neck and head and connect to the horse’s muzzle. It’s unclear whether the rider is using a bit or is only looping a rope over the horse’s nose.
Another scene shows what may be the earliest known depiction of a horse roundup. This is my personal favorite, since the same tradition continues in Galicia today. A rider accompanied by dogs is driving a number of horses through a barrier, maybe a stone wall like those constructed to trap wolves. Some horses have already been pushed through the gate in the wall. A few horses hang in the background. The rider is again shown with reins flying. One arm is raised, wielding a stick.
“That,” Lagos said to me, “is the stick of power.”
I looked and realized that I had seen something similar in the Prado museum in Madrid, in the previously mentioned portrait of a king riding a horse, painted by Velázquez only a few hundred years ago. The theme of horse, rider, and “stick of power” weaponry would remain a symbol for the elite well into the modern era.
I was enthralled by the idea that I might have been looking at the world’s first depiction of a roundup, but when I asked how old the art was, I learned that, sadly, these works couldn’t be firmly dated. Some researchers suggest that they may be as much as five thousand years old, giving credence to the Galician claim that they rode and domesticated horses quite early, regardless of what was happening elsewhere in the world. Others suggest a later date of three thousand or so years ago, by which time riding was quite common in many locations in Europe and Asia. This art, Galicians believe, provides evidence that riding horses began in Galicia. To show me how that could have happened, they took me to a modern Garrano roundup, one that closely resembled the roundup depicted in the stone etching from thousands of years ago.
* * *
When he drew Eohomo clinging merrily to the withers of Eohippus, Thomas Huxley was joking, of course, but it was a joke with a certain small portion of biological truth: riding may be instinctive. Many of my equestrian friends think this is true. We assume that people just naturally jumped on the backs of horses. Many archaeologists, however, disagree. To them, riding horses for the first time would have been a complicated cultural innovation.
Galicians disagree. And so Ransom and I were taken to a rapa das bestas, a “shearing of the beasts.” They wanted me to see how easy it would have been for early people to capture, pen, and ride horses well before those horses were “domesticated” in the conventional sense of the word. Garranos roam at will over the Galician hillsides, but local people routinely harvest their manes and tails to make items like artists’ paintbrushes and bows for stringed instruments.
This is done by rounding up the horses and driving them into a stone corral—just as they had done with wolves, and just as I’d seen depicted in the Galician rock art. Early one Sunday morning, Ransom and I stood with Bárcena on a hillside and watched the scene unfold below us. Horns sounded all over the wide valley. The shouts of men came from many directions, urging the ponies out of their hiding places. Whoops and cries filled the air. The Garranos came jogging along, band by band, keeping just ahead of the noisy people. This was a true community endeavor. People driving on the road above the valley stopped their cars, got out, and yelled, contributing to the effort, and then drove on.
The Garranos were not pushed into a wild run, but were moved along steadily. Every once in a while a stallion galloped for a few strides—often just to chase another stallion—but not for long. No one wanted any injured animals. The flow of horses gathered strength as more and more small bands were herded into the main group. The parade grew larger and larger. When they arrived at the corral, a large arena with high stone walls, the people stopped moving the horses forward. The Garranos responded by eating some gorse.
Eventually, people pressed the horses through a gate into the corral. Inside the corral, panic ensued. Horses like their personal space, and in these tight quarters they were too close to each other. There was a great deal of complaining, of neighing and whinnying and rearing. A few horses kicked out at other horses with flying hind legs.
Villagers round up the Garranos. (Greg Auger)
Into this chaos waded pairs and trios of men carrying long sticks. At the end of each stick, a single length of rope was attached. The rope had been cleverly tied to create a series of slip-rope loops that could be dropped over a horse’s poll and nose to form a headstall. The makeshift halter tightened when a horse pulled, putting pressure on his poll and on his nose. When the horse stopped pulling, the halter loosened. Most of the horses caught this way were easily subdued. Looping one single strand so that it could provide substantial control over a stallio
n was something I’d never seen before.
Yet it was a very simple thing to do. While there’s no proof that Pleistocene people knew how to do this, they were certainly technologically advanced enough to have figured it out. It wasn’t easy to drop the looped rope over the horse’s head. It was much more difficult than using a lasso. Several men helped the man with the rope, often by keeping the other horses away.
First the men caught the stallions, whom they led out of the corral and released. These treasured stallions were allowed to keep their long manes and luxurious tails. They galloped a few steps in appreciation of their freedom but then hung around waiting for the mares.
Next the foals were caught. Some were released to return to the wild as well. These, too, stayed near. Other foals were led to a second corral, where buyers would look them over. One goal of this culling was to select the colts who would become future breeding stallions. A few archaeologists have written that domesticating the horse would have been difficult because controlling a breeding stallion is a dangerous task. They are correct in terms of modern stallion management, which often involves handlers leading a stallion directly to a mare. But there’s a simpler way to control breeding: eliminate the stallions you don’t want. Through this process of elimination, you allow the chosen stallion to sire the next generation without competition. At the rapa das bestas, undesirable colts were sold on, and the colts chosen to sire the next generation went free.
Next, the men caught the mares and brought them to the shearing area. One man held a mare by her head, using the rope halter. A second grasped the mare’s tail, standing to the side to avoid being kicked. A third cut the mare’s mane and tail. Once sheared, the mares ran off to their band members.
Events like these may have been where people learned to ride. In some of the Galician roundups, a team of men wrestle a Garrano to the ground and then clip the hair. After that, a man slides onto the animal’s back. Another man grabs the horse’s tail while a third grabs the forelock and the ear. Usually, the horse doesn’t buck, but instead leaps forward and rears, pulling free of the two men holding the tail and forelock. The rider usually slips off after a few leaps, but we can imagine that a particularly athletic person could have stayed on and ridden until the horse tired. Tiring a horse out is an effective way of getting the animal to accept a rider. If the rider is heavy and the mount is small enough (some Garranos weigh eight hundred pounds or less), this could happen rather quickly.
This Galician event was a different style of horse management than anything Ransom or I had ever seen. These horses were not truly wild, in the sense that they were never handled by people. On the other hand, neither were they domesticated. Breeding is influenced, but not entirely controlled, by human decision-making. As Lagos had seen, mares can and do make their own choices.
What, then, is the Garrano, if not domesticated and not wild? They are sometimes, as I mentioned, called “semi-feral,” but that term implies that the horses are escapees. Since there’s no evidence that these animals were once fully domesticated, and since evidence points to the relationship between the Galicians and their Garranos as having roots that stretch far, far back into the mists of time, neither word really fits.
* * *
Watching the roundup, it struck me that the traditional division between “wild” and “domesticated” may be too rigid, and that for most of the history of the horse-human partnership, this informal style of keeping horses was probably the most common. After all, for most of our history, we didn’t build elaborate barns for horses. And even fencing horses into anything larger than a paddock would have been difficult until barbed wire was invented in 1867.
Until very recently, livestock has generally been allowed to roam at will, accompanied by a herder. When I lived in Africa, I often saw small boys taking their goats and cattle out to graze in the morning and returning with them at night, when they were kept in a boma—a small enclosure made of bushes and twigs whose purpose was not to fence the animals in but to keep the lions out.
Horses, of course, didn’t need to be defended from lions, since they could defend themselves. But since they are creatures of habit, keeping track of them may have been rather simple. The earliest ridden and domesticated horses were probably kept as modern Galicians keep their Garranos.
Ransom, Lagos, Bárcena, and I talked about this possibility as we walked away from the horse corral and headed toward the picnic tables, where, as at American rodeos, much food is shared and much beer consumed.
Bárcena bought us all wine and octopus and ice cream.
“How far back does this tradition go?” I asked him.
I got the stock answer: “For as long as anyone can remember.”
With no artifacts and with only the Galician rock art as a written record, it’s impossible to know. Domesticating sheep, goats, and cattle changed the skeletons of these animals in ways that can be detected by archaeologists, but that’s not the case with horses. There is no substantive discernible difference between a domesticated horse and wild horses.
All of this suggests that the current debate over whether modern free-roaming horses should be called “wild” or “feral” isn’t overly useful. Science is slowly accepting this viewpoint.
The British archaeologist Robin Bendrey talked to me about the changing view.
“It’s always been argued that domestication is biological control—the management of breeding. But in the Near East, the domestication of other animals is beginning to be seen as a long, gradual process where you have a slow change in the relationship between humans and animals.” In Bendrey’s studies of goat domestication, he has found what he calls “a gradual change from the intensification of hunting to the goats associating themselves more with humans. This gradually evolved into early domestication.”
I thought about his phrase “associating themselves.”
How would that apply to horses—in my experience, animals who had always been forced into a relationship with humans? What in the world would horses get out of the deal? Is it possible that the domestication of horses was a two-way street—that horses might have chosen to associate with humans?
Bendrey cautions against thinking of domestication as a unidirectional, simple event. “It’s often been viewed as—humans woke up one morning and decided to domesticate animals because they wanted to eat more,” he said. “But there’s two parties involved in this domestication event. It’s not just a human-based decision.” The partnership of humans and dogs or humans and horses may well have occurred long before the animals were “domesticated” in the conventional sense of the word, in part because the animals themselves benefited. For example, it’s widely believed that northern people first domesticated reindeer by offering them human urine, which contains salts and other minerals the reindeer need in order to thrive during cold, dark winters. As the reindeer became accustomed to this relationship, people became accustomed to following the reindeer.
Perhaps humans had something the horses wanted—handfuls of grain that they had gleaned from wild plants, or access to salt. Or maybe humans helped keep the wolves at bay.
Are there any modern-day examples of this kind of partnership that we can study to see how it might have been done?
* * *
As large flakes of Christmastime snow gently drifted down, I reached out to touch the muzzle of a “third-strike” mustang on Kris Kokal’s farm in Greenfield, New Hampshire. New Hampshire is not a place most people associate with American mustangs, but on this farm twenty or so roamed the pastures that surround the farmhouse. The Kokal family specializes in rehabilitating mustangs that have been poorly cared for by other people. For very little money, the federal government allows people to buy mustangs removed from Western ranges. But since horses who have grown up independent of human supervision “think different” from horses raised around humans, these purchases do not always work out well. In that case, owners may not want to keep the animals, but they may have trouble finding a p
lace to send them. Very few people want to take on the expense of feeding a horse that is difficult to ride or to work around. One place such horses can go is the Kokal farm.
My ungloved hand was still inches from the mustang’s nose when the gelding turned his face away. I reached farther, making at least a bit of physical contact.
“Can I show you something?” Kokal asked kindly.
I nodded.
“Think ‘deal’ or ‘no deal,’” he suggested, extending his hand toward the same horse. This time the horse stretched his head over and connected with Kris, allowing himself to be scratched.
“If he reaches out to connect, then you’ve got a deal,” he explained. “If he turns away, then it’s ‘no deal.’ You need to get that acknowledgment before you do anything more.” To approach the horse after he’s turned his head away is too impatient an act, he explained.
I could see his point. It was kind of like meeting someone halfway. There’s only so much you can do and then the other person—or horse—has to take a step forward.
It often requires quite a while for one of these mustangs to choose to take that first step, given the trauma they’ve experienced at the hands of other humans. One small horse I saw at the Kokal ranch had been very much loved by a couple of kids who had had no money to buy food. Instead, they went every day to a local grocery store and took home the day-old leftover bread the store managers wanted to throw out. For three years, this horse lived on a diet of old bread, in a small paddock made of junk cars. He was emaciated, full of worms, infected with diseases, had hoof problems, and was very wary of people. A concerned neighbor bought the horse from the kids for one hundred dollars and called the Kokals, who agreed to take him. I saw him only a few weeks after he’d arrived. The horse was already more at ease, but he still had a long way to go.
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