In Eclipsed by Shadow, the first book of “The Legend of the Great Horse” trilogy, young Meagan Roberts takes the ride on a prehistoric wild horse. (excerpt of the scene)
According to fossilized bones and cave paintings, that’s just how things were between horses and humans 20,000 years ago.
Our clear understanding of the distant past remains shrouded by the passage of time, but there are two important facts we can know about prehistoric horses:
1) Horses have always been with us. Early man spent many thousands of years watching, stalking, hunting … and painting horses. The horse has been part of humanity’s story since the very beginning.
2) It took thousands of years for primitive humans to even begin to learn to use horses to assist in work. Man’s journey from the caves required a change in attitude to seek forms of cooperation, away from seeing horses as only a form of prey. This new outlook took an amazingly long time to happen, especially considering that it was so tangibly rewarded by a horse’s willingness to share his strength with mankind.
Perhaps we can’t know details about how mankind’s attitude toward horses shifted from meal to tamed beast — but the change is a case of old ways of thinking being replaced by new and better ideas. In this way, horsemanship is a living demonstration that cooperation brings new possibilities to human life and can open entire new worlds.
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Copyright © 2010 John Allen Royce, Jr.