Evidence of Horse Riding

JoatSimeon at aol.com JoatSimeon at aol.com
Wed Apr 25 05:51:19 UTC 2001


In a message dated 4/24/01 8:00:15 PM Mountain Daylight Time, X99Lynx at aol.com
writes:

> If you note all my references were to evidence of HORSE-RIDING in Europe
> and not horses.

-- while many peoples who have kept horses for riding and traction also ate
them, milked the mares, etc., there are virtually no instances of people
keeping horses solely for food.  Outside the steppe zones, even secondary
uses of horses are rarely significant.

This is because horses are much harder to keep than cattle or sheep,
particularly in forest-zone, mixed-agriculture settings.  They have
comparatively delicate digestive systems and die easily, and are much more
difficult to herd than bovines because they're faster, more nimble, and
much more temperamental.

In other words, if horses are present in Europe, it is vanishingly unlikely
that they were being kept primarily as food animals.  They're just not
efficient as forage-to-food converters.

Horses are an expensive luxury.  They weren't even used much for



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