by Briar Miller

Created on: February 11, 2008   Last Updated: June 25, 2009

If you've ever known a pony mad child, you will know that horses have a powerful attraction for some people which goes way beyond the ordinary affection we might feel for a pet. This is not suprising. Ever since around 3000BC horses have been a central part of the development of human civilisation. Human history would have been very different if it had not been for our partnership with the horse.

But what of the horse's history? The ancestry of horses dates back at least 50 million years. Eohippus, the 'Dawn horse' was a tiny little creature smaller than a muntjack deer, about 20cm tall. It didn't have hooves, but three toes ending in a claw and it was a browser rather than a grazer but researchers believe that Eohippus is the earliest ancestor of the modern horse.

Eohippus evolved into several branches so that until about 10,000 years ago, there were several different species of horse-like creatures. At that point they were largely wiped out.

It has been generally agreed that modern horses originated in North America, before the first humans, and that they were wiped out by climate change, only those who'd crossed the land-bridge to Asia surviving. More recent finds cast doubt on this. Archeologists now believe that, like many other large mammals, horses in North America were actually hunted to extinction by Man. Whether it was climate change or hunting, horses did not return until they were brought over by the Spanish in the 16th century.

Almost all of the horse-like creatures we know today are of the species Equus caballus. There are two schools of thought regarding their ancestry. The first school believes that the variety of forms we are familiar with has been created by the interbreeding over time of what were at least four different genii. The second believes that they all evolved from one genus and that the variation is solely a result of humans breeding horses for the charachteristics we needed. The fossil evidence for both views is incomplete so we might never know for sure.

One thing we do know is that Equus caballus, unlike other horse-like species (Przewalski's horse, zebras and wild asses or onagers), is thriving. Their relationship with human has ensured this.

Humans first domesticated horses in around 3000BC, a fact which is proven by their appearance in cave paintings of the time. At first they were used for meat and to carry loads rather than for riding and pulling. Oxen were far more efficient, less difficult to manage and didn't need such high

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