As a rider who has done some reading into the history, one of the things modernity does overlook is how horsemanship provided a practical philosophical basis for human morality.
Going back to Xenophon (and Simeon before him), who wrote one of the earliest surviving treatises on horsemanship, the personal qualities it takes to ride and train were also the basis for leadership. Xenophon's work on the Cavalry General is mainly practical and tactical, but expands on some of the principles of horsemanship - a key one being, "nothing forced can be beautiful."
The essence of it is that because they are prey animals, good horsemanship is necessarily an exercise in leadership.
Dom Duarte's 13th century treatise (next on my list) is also about the moral qualities for horsemanship, and the classic "education of the king," by Pluvinel is about educating the king of France as a horseman, with an eye to developing the king as a leader.
IMHO, officer training has always included horsemanship because it develops a kind of physical presence and fearlessness required to get people to follow them willingly.
Glad to see something like this mentioned on HN, as revisiting the cultivation of leadership through physical and moral exercise is something we in tech could certainly benefit from.
The essence of it is that because they are prey animals, good horsemanship is necessarily an exercise in leadership
That's something I hadn't thought of directly, but it's very true.
My wife is a horse trainer & riding instructor and one of the first things I see her teaching is being decisive and clear about what you want the animal to do. The parents of her younger students (mostly girls) often report that their kids become much more confident after taking lessons.
Horses are very finely attuned to body language and don't respond very well to someone who is timid and uncertain. The flip side of that is, of course, if (s)he really doesn't want to do something, come hell or high water, it ain't happening!
This is pretty fascinating. I think it might explain why the Spanish word for "gentleman" is "Caballero", or "horseman". It is also the word used for "knight", which makes more literal sense.
Not to mention 'chivalry', 'chivalrous', from Old French word chevalerie, "knighthood, chivalry, nobility, cavalry" (11th century), the -erie abstract of chevaler "knight, horseman", from Medieval Latin caballarius (“horseman, knight”), a derivation from caballus (“horse”).
Are you suggesting that leadership is some sort of moral indicator? Or morality is necessary for leadership?
I don't understand how you're making the jump from "leading a horse is like leading a team" (which is easy to agree with) to some point about morality.
The qualities of good horsemanship are essentially moral and physically cultivated qualities, and among those is the ability to be recognized as a leader and followed willingly by another creature in nature.
I am saying the qualities that people recognize as leadership and follow willingly, are moral qualities that can be developed and taught, and there is a history of those being taught through horsemanship.
They are things that take physical work to achieve.
Patience: it's an animal, it doesn't care what you want, but with work and education, you both transform.
Perseverance: incremental work, with a living being that isn't subject to reasoning, is what makes the most change.
Ownership and Obligation: the animal is your responsibility, it does not have responsibility, you own your failures.
Decisiveness: related to ownership.
Benevolence: xenophon's "nothing forced is beautiful," and (I think la Guerieniere's) "ask much, be content with little, reward often." exemplify these.
Takt: the ability to express your intent simply, unambiguously, consistently, and with a stable emotional presence.
Temperence, moderation, and sympathy: this is a living thing you can't just threaten into submission.
Magnanimity: the animal is going to test you constantly, and you have to be greater than it.
There are other aspects that the words we use today have been freighted with inaccurate critical interpretations, but they are similar to the Aristotelian virtues.
These (among many) in addition to exercising the physical experience of leading, which means to be followed willingly. You learn how you don't just read about something and become it.
oh, you are one of those who thinks he's something better than an animal? wonderful, get back to me when my reply didn't invariably offend you because I'm intruding your habitat.
The cow sacrificed itself for us, the horse sacrificed itself for us, the fish sacrifice themselves for us, we sacrifice ourselves for us. And all this in the name of wheat.
Maybe the agricultural revolution was too powerful...
Horses were so incredibly useful to humans, it changed their entire evolutionary course. If I recall correctly, out of the thousands of species of horses, there is only one truly "wild" one left. Any other horses that are untamed and raised in nature are actually feral.
I love the animals. They're like big dogs that don't understand how truly massive they are.
In high school, I had a summer and after-school job cleaning a local horse stable. Up to then I'd had no introduction to horses. This job entailed being in the stalls with the individual horses and shoveling around them. Due to my prompting or self-motivated they'd often move around these fairly tight spaces. I was always amazed at how nimble they were in the sense that they always seemed to know where to put their hoofs to not step on my toes.
Ah, you must live in one of those... whaddyacallem... cities.~
Roadkill is very often eaten by something, though if a human wants to do it, they have to pick it up before the county gets to it. After that, it's literally off the table. The exact method of disposal depends on jurisdiction, but some places have a sanctuary or research facility for carnivorous species nearby.
A random dead deer in NW Indiana, for instance, might get picked up by Wolf Park research facility, stored in their freezer, and fed to the main pack (still frozen).
Dead horses were picked up by knackers and turned into dodgy sausages all the time. This was just one of the unsafe food practices that led to the establishment of the FDA and public health inspectors.
Same thing happens here in MN. If it's within a certain distance of the wolf research facility (the exact name escapes me ATM) in Ely, it's taken there as food for their wolves.
However, since I'm human, I assumed the preposition "we" did not apply in this case.
We actually do. Most large roadkill, if fresh, are often granted to locals. As long as the animal died of the accident, it is as safe to eat as a conventionally harvested one. More common in colder areas for obvious reasons, but I saw it down south too.
I'm sure this happens somewhere, but there are other places where it would be a scandal. I harvested a roadkill turkey one time but only because I saw the van in front of me hit it. After it's on the ground, it's carrion.
It's worth remembering that horses dying of trauma on the street was much less common before widespread automobile adoption. A horse that died on the street in 1900 probably had a number of health issues that would have made consumption more risky. Also it probably had no meat left to speak of. One would have had to just boil everything, to have anything to eat.
I thought traditionally oxen were considered draught animals and primarily used in medieval agriculture around the world no matter the country.
Horses I presume were used but I'm thinking they were much more expensive and less multi-purpose than oxen?
I mean one can also point out a period where civilization was between a pre-oxen standard and that of post-oxen. I understand the part horses play in war but agriculture tends to affect more in history generally speaking.
Horses are stronger and have much better endurance. From what I have read the reason for oxen being used as draft animals is that the horse collar had not yet been invented. Once it was, agricultural production skyrocketed, and the new wealth made possible the Middle Ages.
A technology change in the 1730s made horses viable viable plow animals. It was a lighter metal plow (name escapes me), and ploughmen switched from oxen to horses.
Horses were previously used mainly for military and business transportation via carriage and carts, but this change made them economical for farmers and ploughmen.
Thing is, the temperament and intelligence of horses were different, and the non-military horseman as a profession was born. That was the origin of a lot of the so-called "gypsy," mysticism about "whispering," as there were tricks of the trade that ploughmen used to protect their business.
The history is fascinating, and not unlike the way crypto is today. Where a former exclusively military technology proliferated to a trade class, who organized to "professionalize," it to preserve the integrity and value of its secrets.
They formed something called "the society of the horseman's word," which was a pseudo-masonic group modeled after what Millers had done in their own trade. There is a bunch of hocus pocus around their history, but viewed as a trade association or guild, it makes economic sense.
"The horse collar eventually spread to Europe c. 920 AD, and became universal by the 12th century.[21] The Scandinavians were among the first to utilize a horse collar that did not constrain the breathing passages of the horses.[22] Prior to this development, oxen still remained the primary choice of animal for farm labor, as all the previous harnesses and collars could only be worn by them without physical penalty."
Not disputing horse collar. Point made in a history of horsemanship (an in turn ploughman trades) was that the trade of ploughmen in england moved away from oxen more to horses as the result of a change in plough design.
This excerpt may have been the design change that was referenced.
"There was little attempt to change the design of the plough until the mid 1600's with the Dutch being among the first in improving its shape. This change in shape was soon discovered in Northern England and Scotland with Joseph Foljambe from Rotherham building and patented a plough having what was described as, the perfect implement then in use."
Discredit? Sorry, not intended. Just confused, since horses had been in use for ploughing for centuries. Unaware of any sea change in technique.
And in America of course we credit John Deere for reinventing the moldboard plow in the early 1800's. Sadly we weren't taught of any English innovations in school.
That's just an insensitive comment of yours. As if it being just an "animal" somehow means that it was less of a loss or tragedy. Because its "just" an animal should we not compare numbers to numbers for perspective? Isn't that a rather silly stance to have when talking about deaths in the first place?
Humans are an animals too, the most numerous in fact. We should show some empathy and understanding in regards to all life. Not separate and somehow feel indifferent about anything "non-animal".
This is an example of the (probably universal) human bias that some things, like human lives, are sacred. When we see sacred things treated as even able-to-be-compared to mundane things, flouting their sacredness, it provokes a visceral kind of revulsion, like seeing one's religious icons spat on.
Like most biases, this sacredness phenomenon is not all bad; it's an important heuristic allowing us, as it allowed cavepeople, to make complex moral judgments at a moment's notice. But in the modern world, constantly faced with the need to make evolutionarily-strange types of judgments, it's important that we recognize this feeling as what it is: a tool for instantly making reasonably-accurate decisions.
Comparing the scale of horse deaths to the scale of human deaths isn't an attack on the value of human life; if the author had to save a human or a horse in a snap decision, I'm sure they'd save the human without thinking. They are not a sociopath with a broken sense of sacredness, they're someone who has learned to do an unnatural thing: put aside their gut instinct and speak rationally about these important issues.
> One animal [the horse] was so decisive in shaping human history...
What a Western-centric view.
Entire human civilizations developed for centuries or millennia, without horses -- they really don't conform to the phases of "pre-horse, horse and post-horse" because they were never "horse".
It's possible (although ill-conceived and wrong) to argue that there is no history and no culture outside of Western civilization; but then one should make an argument about it, not simply ignoring immense parts of the human adventure.
Pretty much all of the horseless civilizations got rolled over by people with horses.
The quote wasn't that "no civilization existed without horses", it was that the horse was "decisive in shaping human history".
When you consider what happened to advanced civilizations like the Aztec and Inca when they interfaced with horseborne civilizations, the point makes sense, and isn't doing so by marginalizing people who didn't have horses.
You seem to be inferring that I said that no non-western civilization ever used the horse?
I said no such thing.
I said that a great number of civilization and cultures, that lasted for many centuries, developed without ever using horses, and that therefore, the horse cannot be considered to define all of human civilization.
Yeah, but the Europeans showing up is part of history in the Americas. Thus, the horse influenced human history throughout most of the world. And the cultures of the pacific islands aren't really capable of proving or disproving any broad generalizations about human history. The pacific islands are separated from the mainland by thousands of miles and constitute a tiny land mass.
The Europeans showing up is part of history. And the horse is one of the things which gave Europeans a huge advantage over the native populations here. Hence, I, a descendant of Europeans, am writing this to you from the Americas.
One way in which horses shaped the world is precisely that they only existed in certain places: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo Absence vs. presence is an effect too!
Going back to Xenophon (and Simeon before him), who wrote one of the earliest surviving treatises on horsemanship, the personal qualities it takes to ride and train were also the basis for leadership. Xenophon's work on the Cavalry General is mainly practical and tactical, but expands on some of the principles of horsemanship - a key one being, "nothing forced can be beautiful."
The essence of it is that because they are prey animals, good horsemanship is necessarily an exercise in leadership.
Dom Duarte's 13th century treatise (next on my list) is also about the moral qualities for horsemanship, and the classic "education of the king," by Pluvinel is about educating the king of France as a horseman, with an eye to developing the king as a leader.
IMHO, officer training has always included horsemanship because it develops a kind of physical presence and fearlessness required to get people to follow them willingly.
Glad to see something like this mentioned on HN, as revisiting the cultivation of leadership through physical and moral exercise is something we in tech could certainly benefit from.