Transport & space · c. 2,200 BCE

Domestic horse and riding

Tamed horses give humans speed on land for the first time, reshaping war, trade and herding.

Genetic studies trace the modern domestic horse to the lower Volga-Don steppe around 2200 BCE, from where it spread across Eurasia within a few centuries. Riding and driving horses multiplied travel speed several times over walking. Horses carried messages, armies and nomadic empires for the next 4,000 years.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Livestock domestication 8500 BCE

What it led to 2

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Selected milestones in human travel speed Latest: 39.9k km/h (1969) Source: Wikipedia: Horse gait (gallop 40-48 km/h); Wikipedia: List of speed records in rail transport

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)