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Description
The horse is one of the most important animals in human history. They've been our companions in war, in work, in journeys across the world for millennia now. They've been naturally selected by humans to be our penultimate beast of burden and travelling companions that laid our roads in more ways than one. And all the benefits these animals provide was brought to the inhabitants of Turtle Island when the white man brought them over as well. But even though the story of horses in the Americas is usually told starting with the Spanish bringing them over on their colonial ships in the 1500s, the horse's story actually begins in America itself.

The horse's evolutionary lineage began around 55 million years ago in what is today the beautiful Great Plains of western North America, but what was then a lush forest being fed by the climatic temperature boom of the Paleogene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. This environment produced small little hoofed forest-dwellers called Eohippus. These dog-sized herbivores wandered between the trees, eating foliage on the forest floor, and avoiding the predators lurking in the bush. But their cover of trees started to vanish around 49 million years ago as dear mother Earth became cooler and drier. The forests gave way to vast carpets of grassland. And so Eohippus had to adapt to the environment of these Great Plains. By the Oligocene, their lineage produced Mesohippus and Miohippus, larger and sturdier creatures with teeth more suited for munching on grass. This trend continued forward into the Miocene, which saw the emergence of Parahippus and the first true Equine, Merychippus. Merychippus was especially well-adapted to running on hard ground. It stood tip-toed on its three hoofs, with springy ligaments allowing it to run far and fast. Merychippus was also much larger than its ancestors, and their descendants like Dinohippus would continue to do so, forcing them to adapt to have only one weight-supporting toe on their feet. And finally, by about 5.3 million years ago, all of this culminated in the rise of the genus Equus, the group which includes all of our modern horses.

Horses, master of covering wide swaths of land, radiated out from their North American homelands. Some of them travelled northwards, and made it across the Bering Land Bridge around 2.5 million years ago. From here they dominated the continents of the Old World, finding a familiarity in the great Eurasian Steppes and the savannah of Africa. In Africa, horses first encountered a mysterious creature, a primate which stood on two legs and was developing an ever growing brain size that eventually led to these apes calling themselves humans. The humans spread out of the African Motherland, and encountered horses all along the way. Then, humans came upon Turtle Island around 15,000 years ago as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge. It wasn't long after that horses' numbers in their Motherland began to dwindle. By 10,000 years ago, the human residents of Turtle Island hunted these beasts to extinction in their own home continent. And as the Land Bridge between the Old and New World melted away, all memory of the horse on Turtle Island was wiped away by the invincible tide of time.

But this wasn't the end. Horses persisted in the Old World, where they continued to interact with the humans of those domains. While they too were initially hunted for food like those on Turtle Island, these two species' relationship to each other began to change around 6000 years ago. The people of the Steppe saw the strength and speed of the horses they encountered, and began to bring them into their fold. These domesticated horses carried much of their loads, and pulled their homes along as these nomads continued to move as they always did. This revelation began to spread across Eurasia, and many horses were switched from carrying luggage to carrying chariots. They carried the mightiest warriors of the Ancient kingdoms, from the Pharaohs of Egypt to crafty Odysseus. Horses became the literal backbone of Old World society as they were bred to be bigger and stronger and faster. They were invaluable, and many developed a deeply rooted taboo against eating horses as their ancestors once did. They carried us into battle, across trade routes, into pilgrimage sites, across deserts and plains and mountains, and in many legends, even into the heavens themselves. It was on horses that the Conqueror Mehmed marched into the last city of Rome, and it was horses that the European explorers brought with them as they sought new trade routes across the oceans. And when the Spanish arrived on Turtle Island in the 1500s, horses set foot on their Motherland for the first time in millennia.

Many Native Americans were fascinated by this beast which had been lost to their deepest cultural memories. Even vestiges of mammoths had survived longer than horses did. They became a valuable point of commerce in the trade between the New World and Old, and a devastating upper hand that helped the Old World subjugate the new. But many of these horses broke free from the bonds of the Spanish ranches. The first reported feral horses escaped from their plantations in Tenochtitlan in 1550, and they quickly took over the Great Plains which had birthed their species in the first place. These feral horses encountered the many yet-uncontacted peoples of the Plains, like the Lakota, who took these horses in as their own companions. In their eyes, these animals had just suddenly appeared from over the horizon. These beasts of burden, seemingly perfectly sculpted for riding and carrying their families and supplies, were seen as gifts from the gods without any other contacts. And so the Lakota compared these creatures which they had no frame of reference for to that other most invaluable of companion animals: their sled dogs. To this day, the Lakota word for horse is "Sunka Wakan", which translates roughly to "sacred dog". And so it was that the humans of Turtle Island reconciled with the descendants of those horses who had once called this very land home many millennia ago.

Description
The horse is one of the most important animals in human history. They've been our companions in war, in work, in journeys across the world for millennia now. They've been naturally selected by humans to be our penultimate beast of burden and travelling companions that laid our roads in more ways than one. And all the benefits these animals provide was brought to the inhabitants of Turtle Island when the white man brought them over as well. But even though the story of horses in the Americas is usually told starting with the Spanish bringing them over on their colonial ships in the 1500s, the horse's story actually begins in America itself.

The horse's evolutionary lineage began around 55 million years ago in what is today the beautiful Great Plains of western North America, but what was then a lush forest being fed by the climatic temperature boom of the Paleogene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. This environment produced small little hoofed forest-dwellers called Eohippus. These dog-sized herbivores wandered between the trees, eating foliage on the forest floor, and avoiding the predators lurking in the bush. But their cover of trees started to vanish around 49 million years ago as dear mother Earth became cooler and drier. The forests gave way to vast carpets of grassland. And so Eohippus had to adapt to the environment of these Great Plains. By the Oligocene, their lineage produced Mesohippus and Miohippus, larger and sturdier creatures with teeth more suited for munching on grass. This trend continued forward into the Miocene, which saw the emergence of Parahippus and the first true Equine, Merychippus. Merychippus was especially well-adapted to running on hard ground. It stood tip-toed on its three hoofs, with springy ligaments allowing it to run far and fast. Merychippus was also much larger than its ancestors, and their descendants like Dinohippus would continue to do so, forcing them to adapt to have only one weight-supporting toe on their feet. And finally, by about 5.3 million years ago, all of this culminated in the rise of the genus Equus, the group which includes all of our modern horses.

Horses, master of covering wide swaths of land, radiated out from their North American homelands. Some of them travelled northwards, and made it across the Bering Land Bridge around 2.5 million years ago. From here they dominated the continents of the Old World, finding a familiarity in the great Eurasian Steppes and the savannah of Africa. In Africa, horses first encountered a mysterious creature, a primate which stood on two legs and was developing an ever growing brain size that eventually led to these apes calling themselves humans. The humans spread out of the African Motherland, and encountered horses all along the way. Then, humans came upon Turtle Island around 15,000 years ago as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge. It wasn't long after that horses' numbers in their Motherland began to dwindle. By 10,000 years ago, the human residents of Turtle Island hunted these beasts to extinction in their own home continent. And as the Land Bridge between the Old and New World melted away, all memory of the horse on Turtle Island was wiped away by the invincible tide of time.

But this wasn't the end. Horses persisted in the Old World, where they continued to interact with the humans of those domains. While they too were initially hunted for food like those on Turtle Island, these two species' relationship to each other began to change around 6000 years ago. The people of the Steppe saw the strength and speed of the horses they encountered, and began to bring them into their fold. These domesticated horses carried much of their loads, and pulled their homes along as these nomads continued to move as they always did. This revelation began to spread across Eurasia, and many horses were switched from carrying luggage to carrying chariots. They carried the mightiest warriors of the Ancient kingdoms, from the Pharaohs of Egypt to crafty Odysseus. Horses became the literal backbone of Old World society as they were bred to be bigger and stronger and faster. They were invaluable, and many developed a deeply rooted taboo against eating horses as their ancestors once did. They carried us into battle, across trade routes, into pilgrimage sites, across deserts and plains and mountains, and in many legends, even into the heavens themselves. It was on horses that the Conqueror Mehmed marched into the last city of Rome, and it was horses that the European explorers brought with them as they sought new trade routes across the oceans. And when the Spanish arrived on Turtle Island in the 1500s, horses set foot on their Motherland for the first time in millennia.

Many Native Americans were fascinated by this beast which had been lost to their deepest cultural memories. Even vestiges of mammoths had survived longer than horses did. They became a valuable point of commerce in the trade between the New World and Old, and a devastating upper hand that helped the Old World subjugate the new. But many of these horses broke free from the bonds of the Spanish ranches. The first reported feral horses escaped from their plantations in Tenochtitlan in 1550, and they quickly took over the Great Plains which had birthed their species in the first place. These feral horses encountered the many yet-uncontacted peoples of the Plains, like the Lakota, who took these horses in as their own companions. In their eyes, these animals had just suddenly appeared from over the horizon. These beasts of burden, seemingly perfectly sculpted for riding and carrying their families and supplies, were seen as gifts from the gods without any other contacts. And so the Lakota compared these creatures which they had no frame of reference for to that other most invaluable of companion animals: their sled dogs. To this day, the Lakota word for horse is "Sunka Wakan", which translates roughly to "sacred dog". And so it was that the humans of Turtle Island reconciled with the descendants of those horses who had once called this very land home many millennia ago.