Urban & Regional Studies 198 Animals & Society  

Western conceptions of objectivity and individuality have resulted in a readier appreciation of the worth of animals and nature than has been recognized. This provocative book takes issue with the popular view that the Western cultural tradition, in contrast to Eastern and Aboriginal traditions, has encouraged attitudes of domination and exploitation towards nature, particularly animals.

The horse is surely the "aristocrat" of animals domesticated by man. This book documents the origins of horse domestication on the Pontic-Caspian steppes some 6,000 years ago and the consequent migration of equestrian tribes across Eurasia to the borders of sedentary states. Horse-chariotry and cavalry in effect changed the nature of warfare in the civilizations of the Middle East, India, and China. But, beyond the battlefield, horsepower also afforded great advances in transport, agriculture, industry, and science. Rapidity of horse communications forged far-flung equestrian empires, where language, law, weights, measures, and writing systems were standardized and revolutionary technologies and ideas were disseminated across continents. Always recognizing this dual character of horsepower - both destructive and constructive - the politico-military and economic importance of the horse is discussed in the rise of Hittite, Achaemenid, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Arab, Mongol, and Turkic states. Following Columbian contact, Old and New World cultures are contrastively evaluated in terms of presence or absence of the horse. And Spanish conquest of the horseless Americas is seen as the model for subsequent European equestrian colonization of horseless territories around the planet.

A blend of natural and social history follows the role that the horse has played in shaping human progress from the evolution of the wild ass to the concept of using horses for labor and transportation.

Issues of research, scholarship, and human ad animal interactions are revealed in a work which examines humanist stories about nature and culture, examining animal-human connections, relationships, and anthropology.