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The Horse Helped Shape Our World at Great Expense to Itself
- jankotek 9y ago> While 600,000 men lost their lives in the Civil War, some 1.5 million horses and mules also perished. Horse is an animal. I find it highly disturbing to compare their 'loses' to actual humans.
- frankmonkey 9y agoAnd what are you, fellow primate?
- NinjaKitten 9y agoThat's just an insensitive comment of yours. As if it being just an "animal" somehow means that it was less of a loss or tragedy. Because its "just" an animal should we not compare numbers to numbers for perspective? Isn't that a rather silly stance to have when talking about deaths in the first place? Humans are an animals too, the most numerous in fact. We should show some empathy and understanding in regards to all life. Not separate and somehow feel indifferent about anything "non-animal".
- NinjaKitten 9y agoCorrection: *anything "non-human".
- jankotek 9y ago> As if it being just an "animal" somehow means that it was less of a loss or tragedy. This is exactly what i am talking about. Highly disturbing.
- Dylan16807 9y agoYou find it disturbing to compare the two, while keeping them clearly separate? That sounds like it makes a lot of perfectly ordinary conversations difficult.
- firethief 9y agoThis is an example of the (probably universal) human bias that some things, like human lives, are sacred. When we see sacred things treated as even able-to-be-compared to mundane things, flouting their sacredness, it provokes a visceral kind of revulsion, like seeing one's religious icons spat on. Like most biases, this sacredness phenomenon is not all bad; it's an important heuristic allowing us, as it allowed cavepeople, to make complex moral judgments at a moment's notice. But in the modern world, constantly faced with the need to make evolutionarily-strange types of judgments, it's important that we recognize this feeling as what it is: a tool for instantly making reasonably-accurate decisions. Comparing the scale of horse deaths to the scale of human deaths isn't an attack on the value of human life; if the author had to save a human or a horse in a snap decision, I'm sure they'd save the human without thinking. They are not a sociopath with a broken sense of sacredness, they're someone who has learned to do an unnatural thing: put aside their gut instinct and speak rationally about these important issues.
- nikanj 9y ago"At the turn of the 20th century some 130,000 horses were at work on any given day in New York City, and 20 of them died daily." I wonder how many cars get totalled in NY per day
- pfisch 9y agoHow many humans were at work on any given day in New York City, and how many of them died daily? I'm not sure I buy the whole peacetime was hell for horses vs lower or middle class humans during these same time periods.
- yesenadam 9y agoRough calculation: If horses live 20 years, that's 7300 days, so 0.0001369 chance of dying on a particular day, x130,000 = 17.8 dying per day
- dreen 9y agoThe article at http://qi.com/infocloud/horses http://qi.com/infocloud/horses gives a figure more than twice that and offers this additional bit of info: "Dead horses were unwieldy, and street cleaners often waited several days for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces."
- himlion 9y agoWhy weren't they commonly eaten? A lot of fine meat I'd say in a time when meat was relatively more expensive.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoSame reason we don't eat random dead deer at the side of the road...
- nugi 9y agoWe actually do. Most large roadkill, if fresh, are often granted to locals. As long as the animal died of the accident, it is as safe to eat as a conventionally harvested one. More common in colder areas for obvious reasons, but I saw it down south too.
- zamazingo 9y agoI doubt the horses had a real say in this, and the deliberate use of active tense to legitimize the "sacrifice" is very annoying.
- jhiska 9y agoReplace "the horse" with "black people" in the title and you will understand the wordplay.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ams6110 9y agoYou are equating black people with animals? See how this sort of response is not helpful?
- posterboy 9y agooh, you are one of those who thinks he's something better than an animal? wonderful, get back to me when my reply didn't invariably offend you because I'm intruding your habitat.
- posterboy 9y agoI doubt anyone had a "real-say" in this, all just involuntary nervous reactions. /s
- ThalesX 9y agoThe cow sacrificed itself for us, the horse sacrificed itself for us, the fish sacrifice themselves for us, we sacrifice ourselves for us. And all this in the name of wheat. Maybe the agricultural revolution was too powerful...
- jcroll 9y agotheres a car in space tho
- bwanab 9y agohttp://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
- baking 9y agoWould we have had the industrial revolution without the agricultural revolution and all that followed from it?
- jdc 9y agoIs it not in the name of carrying capacity?
- lacker 9y agoThe dodo, the mammoth, and many more large mammals were sacrificed in the name of hunting. Better to be a horse!
- bambax 9y ago> One animal [the horse] was so decisive in shaping human history... What a Western-centric view. Entire human civilizations developed for centuries or millennia, without horses -- they really don't conform to the phases of "pre-horse, horse and post-horse" because they were never "horse". It's possible (although ill-conceived and wrong) to argue that there is no history and no culture outside of Western civilization; but then one should make an argument about it, not simply ignoring immense parts of the human adventure.
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoMongols are considered "western civilization?"
- bambax 9y agoYou seem to be inferring that I said that no non-western civilization ever used the horse? I said no such thing. I said that a great number of civilization and cultures, that lasted for many centuries, developed without ever using horses, and that therefore, the horse cannot be considered to define all of human civilization.
- toasterlovin 9y agoDomestication of the horse shaped human history pretty much everywhere except Africa and Southeast Asia.
- tacomonstrous 9y agoAlso, the Americas till the Europeans showed up.
- toasterlovin 9y agoThe Europeans showing up is part of history. And the horse is one of the things which gave Europeans a huge advantage over the native populations here. Hence, I, a descendant of Europeans, am writing this to you from the Americas.
- exabrial 9y agoHorses were so incredibly useful to humans, it changed their entire evolutionary course. If I recall correctly, out of the thousands of species of horses, there is only one truly "wild" one left. Any other horses that are untamed and raised in nature are actually feral. I love the animals. They're like big dogs that don't understand how truly massive they are.
- gadders 9y agoI always thought they were more like slightly more aesthetically pleasing cows.
- bwanab 9y agoIn high school, I had a summer and after-school job cleaning a local horse stable. Up to then I'd had no introduction to horses. This job entailed being in the stalls with the individual horses and shoveling around them. Due to my prompting or self-motivated they'd often move around these fairly tight spaces. I was always amazed at how nimble they were in the sense that they always seemed to know where to put their hoofs to not step on my toes.
- motohagiography 9y agoAs a rider who has done some reading into the history, one of the things modernity does overlook is how horsemanship provided a practical philosophical basis for human morality. Going back to Xenophon (and Simeon before him), who wrote one of the earliest surviving treatises on horsemanship, the personal qualities it takes to ride and train were also the basis for leadership. Xenophon's work on the Cavalry General is mainly practical and tactical, but expands on some of the principles of horsemanship - a key one being, "nothing forced can be beautiful." The essence of it is that because they are prey animals, good horsemanship is necessarily an exercise in leadership. Dom Duarte's 13th century treatise (next on my list) is also about the moral qualities for horsemanship, and the classic "education of the king," by Pluvinel is about educating the king of France as a horseman, with an eye to developing the king as a leader. IMHO, officer training has always included horsemanship because it develops a kind of physical presence and fearlessness required to get people to follow them willingly. Glad to see something like this mentioned on HN, as revisiting the cultivation of leadership through physical and moral exercise is something we in tech could certainly benefit from.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoThe essence of it is that because they are prey animals, good horsemanship is necessarily an exercise in leadership That's something I hadn't thought of directly, but it's very true. My wife is a horse trainer & riding instructor and one of the first things I see her teaching is being decisive and clear about what you want the animal to do. The parents of her younger students (mostly girls) often report that their kids become much more confident after taking lessons. Horses are very finely attuned to body language and don't respond very well to someone who is timid and uncertain. The flip side of that is, of course, if (s)he really doesn't want to do something, come hell or high water, it ain't happening!
- ereyes01 9y agoThis is pretty fascinating. I think it might explain why the Spanish word for "gentleman" is "Caballero", or "horseman". It is also the word used for "knight", which makes more literal sense.
- a2tech 9y agoA memorial to the almost 1 million horses, donkeys, and mules that died in World War 1 is being built in England: https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/789444/War-Horse-Memorial-Ascot-honour-First-World-War-heroes https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/789444/War-Horse-M...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- forkLding 9y agoI thought traditionally oxen were considered draught animals and primarily used in medieval agriculture around the world no matter the country. Horses I presume were used but I'm thinking they were much more expensive and less multi-purpose than oxen? I mean one can also point out a period where civilization was between a pre-oxen standard and that of post-oxen. I understand the part horses play in war but agriculture tends to affect more in history generally speaking.
- gascan 9y agoI'm not well-versed, but the reason you see oxen dominant in antiquity is because the ox yoke is far simpler to make than horse collar. I'd be curious to hear about distinct advantages to plow horses. They must exist, otherwise no one would plow with horses.
- woodandsteel 9y agoHorses are stronger and have much better endurance. From what I have read the reason for oxen being used as draft animals is that the horse collar had not yet been invented. Once it was, agricultural production skyrocketed, and the new wealth made possible the Middle Ages.
- motohagiography 9y agoA technology change in the 1730s made horses viable viable plow animals. It was a lighter metal plow (name escapes me), and ploughmen switched from oxen to horses. Horses were previously used mainly for military and business transportation via carriage and carts, but this change made them economical for farmers and ploughmen. Thing is, the temperament and intelligence of horses were different, and the non-military horseman as a profession was born. That was the origin of a lot of the so-called "gypsy," mysticism about "whispering," as there were tricks of the trade that ploughmen used to protect their business. The history is fascinating, and not unlike the way crypto is today. Where a former exclusively military technology proliferated to a trade class, who organized to "professionalize," it to preserve the integrity and value of its secrets. They formed something called "the society of the horseman's word," which was a pseudo-masonic group modeled after what Millers had done in their own trade. There is a bunch of hocus pocus around their history, but viewed as a trade association or guild, it makes economic sense.