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walruskingmike t1_jb76hav wrote

Reply to comment by IamPurgamentum in Humans Started Riding Horses 5,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests by geoxol

You're simply ignoring that horses leave skeletons when they die and we can measure those skeletons. We know when they could be ridden and when they couldn't. They needed to be bred for riding; engineering an animal to grow by 40% isn't simple and takes a long time. You're just making false equivalencies to other technologies based on nothing but conjecture.

And by your own logic that people should've decided to develop horse riding much earlier, then people in sub Saharan Africa should've been riding around on Zebras. They weren't "prioritizing horses" because horses are not a native species. They were brought into sub Saharan Africa relatively recently, so why didn't people ride Zebras when there were no horses present, a period that lasted tens of thousands of years? By your logic, it should've happened. And if zebras are perceived more like donkies, then that also applies to early horses, which mentioned earlier. A zebra and early horses are about the same size, so the conditions are about equal.

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IamPurgamentum t1_jb788tf wrote

No, that's not my argument and you keep mentioning zebras when we have just established the difference between a zebra, a horse and a donkey. There is a difference of intelligence. To advocate that this is what was used and regarded enough to breed when other similar creatures were around is to acknowledge that they knew the difference. To know the difference means they are more than capable of considering and attempting to put someone on top of a horse, baring anything else. If you imported those creatures then the people before realised this and so on.

The size of the horse (unless it's massively smaller) is irrelevant, children were sent to work not so long ago.

You're are caught on your argument rather than considering the argument against it. People are people.

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walruskingmike t1_jb87cr3 wrote

You keep shifting your goalpost and ignoring like half of what I say in each comment. Now suddenly early horses were chosen because they're so much smarter than zebras and donkeys. Did you ever think that maybe horses have been bred for their intelligence? They're also nearly half a meter taller now too, because we bred them for it. Did you personally compare the intelligence of early horses to zebras? Hell, even to Przewalski's horse, if you want to get comparative about it. Because if not, you have no point here, just more guesses.

We're back to child cavalry now, are we? What exactly can you get done more with a child on the back of a horse that you couldn't get done by just having the horse pull something? Bear in mind, that in order to tame a horse for riding so that it won't buck you off, you need someone to break it in while on its back, a back that won't hold an adult; even modern horses don't like this process when feral and they've been bred for this for thousands of years. So now you need tweens breaking them in. So you're arguing that a culture decided to have their children try to be the first horsemen, something that's incredibly dangerous and at that point hadn't been tried; and for what reason, you still haven't said. Not to mention, there is exactly zero evidence for child-only horsemanship in either history or archaeology; but hey, it makes you think you're clever.

I guess all of history, anthropology, and archeology are wrong, though, and some dude on the internet is right. You got me. Go ahead and respond in whatever way makes you feel smartest if you really feel like you need the last word. I won't be reading it.

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