Horses Were Originally Domesticated Not for Riding, But for Eating
Eventually, humans domesticated horses to the same extent that cattle are domesticated. They had herds of horses that could be controlled and culled for food just like cattle. The tamer mares, which grew ever tamer with time because of selective breeding, could even get milked. In many ways, horses were preferable to cattle and sheep in the harsh Steppe winter. One has to store feed for cattle and sheep over the winter, because they don’t graze when snow covers the grass. Sheep will try, but the snow and ice hurt their mouths and tear up their lips, and they will eventually die. Cows won’t even try, and will simply starve to death even with grass beneath the snow. Horses, by contrast, will use their hooves to move the snow to get at the grass beneath, and will break frozen pond surfaces to get at water.
It took thousands of years from when horses were first domesticated as a food source until somebody – probably as a lark – got on the back of one and rode it. By then, because of many generations’ worth of selective breeding, the domesticated horse herds had grown steadily more docile. Eventually, some individuals were amenable enough to let somebody get on their back. They had also become docile enough to let themselves get harnessed to carts as draft animals – something that had already been done with domesticated asses. The same process that worked to domesticate horses might work to domesticate zebras. Like horses and cattle, zebras share traits that lend themselves to domestication in that they live in herds, and are innately submissive to a dominant member. Control that dominant member, and you control the herd.
