Horseback riding and the unintended consequences of innovation

Summary

Every technological innovation carries a social agenda, usually one that was not intended or even foreseen by its inventors. The domestication of the horse in the Eurasian steppes probably was initially an attempt to secure winter-adapted meat animals, but horseback riding transformed the initial innovation into a revolution in transport. Riding made steppe herding more efficient, transformed tribal raiding, and eventually was combined with wagon transport to create a new way of life based on mobility that domesticated the steppe environment and transformed European populations.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Technological Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage