REVIEW: Galloping Through History: William Taylor’s Brand-New "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History"

William Taylor's "Hoof Beats" brings up to date the epic story of horse domestication, technology, and human development across cultures...

William Taylor's Hoof Beats brings up to date the epic story of horse domestication, technology, and human development across cultures...

It provides a bold perspective on the deep-rooted relationship between humans and horses, widening the focus from the Yamnaya-Indo-European language-horse conquest nexus, moving beyond origins in the Pontic Steppe and subsequent radiation from there to show how cultures across the world, from Mongolia to the Great Plains, embraced first equid and then Equus Caballus biotechnology not independently, but also not derivatively from a single Pontic-Steppe source. Modern Bioarchaeology and genomics give us a richer view

Taylor organizes his account into four "beats": the horse, the chariot, the rider, and the world. Each delves into how horses transformed warfare, trade, human mobility, and even art, starting long before horse domestication as we know it.

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I reviewed this book for UC Press as it was making its way through the publication process!

• Taylor, William T. 2024. Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History. Oakland: University of California Press. <https://www.williamttaylor.com>.

Taylor’s book is a very nice updating and focus-widening of large parts of, and thus is a substantial (and better) replacement for, David W. Anthony’s truly excellent, but now somewhat long-in-the-tooth, The Horse, the Wheel, & Language. There has been a lot of work in and a lot of resulting discoveries from horse archeology over the nearly two decades since Anthony.