Asian Review of Books William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)
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Oct 17, 2024 William T. Taylor, Assistant Professor and Curator of Archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, dives into how horses transformed human societies. He discusses the evolving theories of horse domestication, revealing surprising new evidence about origins like the Botai civilization and the Plains Indians. Taylor also shares fascinating insights from archaeological finds, including skeletal remains that illuminate human-horse relationships, and reflects on horses' significant cultural symbolism throughout history.
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Personal Path To Horse Research
- William Taylor describes growing up in Montana surrounded by horse culture artifacts despite not having horses.
- His first dig in Western Mongolia excavating a 2,000-year-old horse burial sparked his career studying ancient horses.
Deep-Time Human–Horse Bond
- Humans hunted horses for hundreds of thousands of years and depicted them frequently in Paleolithic art.
- Horses shaped early human culture, belief, and hunting technology long before domestication.
Genomics Rewrites Domestication Timing
- New tools like ancient DNA and isotopes shifted the timeline of horse domestication later than older theories.
- Genomics links the first domestic horse lineages to a Western steppe burst about a millennium later than earlier claims.
