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CHAPTER VIII 



EARLY HISTORY OF HORSEMANSHIP 

 BY E. L. ANDERSON 



THE FIRST RIDERS THE BIT 



UNTIL quite recently we have been taught to believe that 

 Western Asia was the first home of the horse, and that the 

 animal was probably domesticated by the Shemitic tribes who 

 poured into the Euphrates valley at the beginning of those 

 times when our knowledge of history has its source. Late dis- 

 coveries, however, show us that at a period long anterior to the 

 earliest records of Shumir and Accad horses were known to 

 mankind in various parts of Europe. Naturalists have described 

 these animals as forming three races : Equus fossilis, Equus 

 speleus, Equus caballus. The latter is the true horse of our 

 times, the others appear to have differed very slightly, if at all, 

 except in size, from the true horse, and they may have been 

 prototypes, or varieties, or simply smaller examples of the true 

 horse. Be this as it may, the remains of the horse of our times 

 are found with those of the extinct mammals of the quaternary 

 period ; and, as far as I can discover, our horse has an antiquity 

 as great as that of any existing quadruped. 



The primitive man who dwelt in rock-shelters and caves, 

 and who is supposed to have flourished in that division of the 

 world's history called the 'reindeer period,' certainly used the 

 horse for food. In the caves of the Dordogne in France, in 

 Switzerland, and in other countries, great quantities of the bones 



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