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Journey to the ancient past with cutting-edge science and new data to discover how horses forever altered the course of human history.
From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, William T. Taylor explores how momentous events in the story of humans and horses helped create the world we live in today. Tracing the horse's origins and spread from the western Eurasian steppes to the invention of horse-drawn transportation and the explosive shift to mounted riding, Taylor offers a revolutionary new account of how horses altered the course of human history.
Drawing on Indigenous perspectives, ancient DNA, and new research from Mongolia to the Great Plains and beyond, Taylor guides readers through the major discoveries that have placed the horse at the origins of globalization, trade, biological exchange, and social inequality. Hoof Beats transforms our understanding of both horses and humanity's ancient past and asks us to consider what our relationship with horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.
Acknowledgments
Prelude
Beat One · Horses and People
1. Evolution
2. Connection
3. Tracing Domestication
Beat Two · The Cart
4. Wheels
5. Chariots
Beat Three · The Rider
6. Oracle Bones
7. Horseback
8. Horse People
9. The Silk and Tea Roads
10. Steppe Empires
11. Desert and Savanna Empires
Beat Four · The World
12. Out to Sea
13. The Return
14. Pampas
15. Into the Pacifi c and Down Under
16. Iron Horses
17. Hoofprints
List of Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
William T. Taylor is Assistant Professor and Curator of Archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in Boulder.
– Winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Book Award 2024, awarded by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund, University of Colorado Boulder
"Taylor is helping break new ground with his scientific perspective on horse domestication, the timing and origins of which scholars have argued over for decades."
– Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine
"Hoof Beats helps readers see the drama even in the grass eating [...] Taylor has written that too-rare work that is as authoritative as it is legible to the lay audience."
– New York Times
"This eminently readable, patiently argued, and insightful history of horses will delight and instruct readers, even those who have never felt the pull of saddle leather and horse sweat. It provides the best summary to date of our ever increasing scientific knowledge of the horse and its interaction with our own species, and shows the debt we owe scholars like Taylor who have spent their lives traveling across the globe to lie on their bellies looking for the tiniest scraps of the past."
– Asian Review of Books
"Fantastically rich."
– Science
"Delivered in beautiful and accessible prose that gallops, prances, and saunters with equine majesty, this genre-bending book is a compelling global history of the world people and horses made together. A captivating story that horse lovers, scholars, teachers, students, and the general public will find irresistible."
– Akinwumi Ogundiran, author of The Yoruba: A New History
"Working on three continents with geneticists, historians, anthropologists, and Indigenous people, William T. Taylor has been pursuing for more than a decade the story of how people and horses came together. This is a crisp, thoughtful survey of one of the most exciting new areas in the study of the human past, unraveling the secrets of one of our species' oldest, deepest, and most essential relationships."
– Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and The Wizard and the Prophet
"A tremendous feat. Taylor integrates a vast quantity of different kinds of data to illustrate how the relationship between humans and horses, past and present, has shaped the world we live in today – and tells a terrific story along the way."
– Emily Lena Jones, coauthor of Questioning Rebound: People and Environmental Change in the Protohistoric and Early Historic Americas
"The most comprehensive narrative to date about the relationship between humans and horses, a panoramic analysis of how the noble equid has led us to where we are today. No other book so succinctly describes the animal's role in the development of the global community."
– Will Grant, author of The Last Ride of the Pony Express
"For millennia, historians have recounted the story of the horse in bits and pieces, much of it infused with myth and romance. William Taylor thoughtfully revisits the epic story of humankind's most important partner, weaving a sweeping new tale that replaces outdated thinking with the latest scientific revelations and adds a significant contribution to the literature."
– Peter Gwin, Senior Editor, National Geographic
