Producer: Sarah Birnbaum
Associate Producer: Ronnie Godeanu
Design Director: Mohammad Riza
Writer: David Malakoff
Designers: Sabina Daley, Shannon Palmer
Graphic Art and Animation: Lenny Drozner
Acting Technical Director: G. Francisco Perin
Scientific Consultant: Gianna Scaralia

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Ann Willmott Andersson, Director of Interactive & Broadband.

© 1999 Thirteen/WNET New York

All Rights Reserved

Television Credits

A co-production of TV Matters, Thirteen/WNET New York, and Nature Conservation Films.

Funder Credits

Funding for the TV series NATURE is made possible in part by Park Foundation. Major corporate support is provided by Canon U.S.A., Inc., Ford Motor Company, and TIAA-CREF. Additional support is provided by the nation’s public television stations.

We recommend the following Web sites for those interested in subjects presented on the program. All links are valid as of March 8, 2002.

Carousel Riding Center
http://www.carouselridingcenter.org
Learn more about Carol Wooley’s therapeutic riding center and the medal-winning horse Carousel.

American Quarter Horse — Characteristics
http://www.storeybooks.com/main/horse/horse_pages/horse_breeds/quarter_horse.html#Anchor-Breed-35882
Traits of one of the world’s most popular breeds.

American Horse Defense Fund
http://www.ahdf.org/
The AHDF’s mission is to facilitate the protection, conservation, and humane treatment of members of all Equid species.

Fossil Horses in Cyberspace
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/fhc.htm
A virtual museum exhibit developed by the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Wild Horse and Burro Internet Adoption
http://www.adoptahorse.blm.gov/
The Bureau of Land Management tells you how to adopt a wild horse.

International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros
http://www.ispmb.com/
Dedicated to the preservation and protection of free-roaming wild horses and burros, nationally and internationally.

Horses and History
http://mysite.verizon.net/mmaidens
A nice review of the horse’s impact on human society from Melinda Maidens.

Print Resources

Ames, Fran. THE BIG BOOK OF HORSES: THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO MORE THAN 100 OF THE WORLD’S BEST BREEDS. New York: Courage Books, 1999.

Barclay, Harold. THE ROLE OF THE HORSE IN MAN’S CULTURE. New York: J.A. Allen, 1980.

Budiansky, Stephen. THE NATURE OF HORSES. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Price, Steven D. THE AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE: AN INTRODUCTION TO SELECTION, CARE, AND ENJOYMENT. New York: The Lyons Press, 1998.

Prince, Eleanor. BASIC HORSE CARE. New York: Main Street Books, 1989.

“A dog may be a man’s best friend,” a horse breeder once said, “but history was written by the horse.”

An overstatement? Perhaps not. Since humans first domesticated horses nearly 5,000 years ago, the brainy and brawny horse has played a central role in shaping human culture. They not only enabled faster communication and travel, but also proved decisive allies in military campaigns, with mounted troops often overwhelming foot-bound infantry.

The horse was such an effective weapon, in fact, that empires from Egypt to Mexico crumbled before the onslaught of mounted enemies, who brought with them new ideas, technologies, and cultural practices. As an 18th-century historian, John Moore, once put it in the purple prose of the time: “Wherever man has left his footprint in the long ascent from barbarism, we will find the hoofprint of the horse beside it.”

Historians disagree, however, about whether the first tamed horses were used primarily for food, riding, or to pull carts — probably all three. But they do agree that by about 3,000 years ago, the horse had become a fixture of many ancient civilizations. Indeed, due to their use in war, horses quickly became associated with power and prestige, while slow-footed donkeys enjoyed a less exciting reputation.

Military horses have proven essential.

The horse’s quick feet so impressed the Persians that they put the animal to work as a communications tool. In the 5th century BC, Persian officials used mounted couriers, who would ride a short distance, then hand messages off to

Riders in Jerez, Spain, revisit another era. Rested riders, to send instructions to their far-flung colonies. The riders were instructed not to let “snow, rain, heat, nor darkness” keep them from delivering their precious cargo. Centuries later, in the 1800s, the U.S. Pony Express borrowed the same method — and motto — as its riders galloped across the new nation, delivering the messages that drew America together.

It is the lowly workhorse, however, that may have had the biggest impact on human history. Bred to haul heavy loads day in and day out, the workhorse changed the practice of farming and industry. Harvests could suddenly be transported long distances, creating trade and wealth in villages that had once had little contact with the outside world. Similarly, timber and stone could be moved to cities and towns, greatly increasing the supplies of raw materials available to shipyards, carpenters, and builders.

In an age of trucks and trains, it is hard to imagine that a trained team of draft horses once pulled as much as some locomotives. But the term “horsepower” — coined by the English engineer James Watt to measure how much work is done by an engine — suggests just how much respect these animal teams earned. Still, they proved no match for modern engines. Watt concluded, after careful experiments with workhorses, that a one-horsepower engine could pull about 50% more weight in a single day than a horse.

But even racecar owners would agree: no high-horsepower motor has anywhere near the personality — or historical importance — of a real horse.

The horse has long been a symbol of freedom. But for disabled people confined to wheelchairs, time spent riding can take on a special meaning — a chance to break free for a while from the confines of everyday life and challenge stereotypes about the disabled.

NATURE’s HORSES profiles the remarkable story of one woman who has dedicated her life to nurturing this therapeutic bond between horses and people. Carol Wooley has loved horses since she was a child. “I wanted to have a horse ever since I can remember,” she says. Finally, at 19, she got her wish: “A two-year-old palomino who tried to kill me a few times, but we got along,” Wooley remembers. Indeed, she ended up riding the horse for 22 years.

Carol Wooley, founder of the Carousel Riding School.

In 1996, however, Carol took her love of horses one step further. Two weeks after the Atlanta Olympic Games, another world-class competition came to town: the Paralympics, for the world’s best disabled athletes. Organizers needed horses for equestrian events and Carol decided to help out, taking time off work to bring several horses to the games. One was an old swaybacked hunting pony named Carousel.

Carousel proved to be too much to handle for several riders, but then Brita Anderson of Denmark took the reins. “Brita and Carousel made a connection,” Wooley recalls. “He knew exactly what she wanted and she knew how to get the most out of him . . . they were a perfect match.”

Indeed, Anderson and Carousel went on to win a gold medal in dressage riding, a competition that puts horse and rider through a demanding, disciplined series of routines in a show ring. “Carousel hadn’t done dressage work since I don’t know when,” Wooley recalls. “But he went out there like he’d always done it.” The unexpected win “had to be one of the high points of my life,” Wooley says.

In fact, her Paralympic experience changed the direction of her life. She never returned to her previous job as a graphic artist. Instead, she started a nonprofit therapeutic riding school on a small farm about 100 miles south of Atlanta. The Carousel Riding School is one of some 600 such schools in the United States which use riding as a way to improve the lives of those dealing with disabilities, both physical and emotional. For people who must often rely on others to move their wheelchairs from place to place, the freedom of horseback can be particularly fulfilling, Wooley says. “People who are tired of being pushed around can get a lot psychologically out of being able to control their own horse,” she says.

Today, a “fat and happy” Carousel lives on the farm in semi-retirement, along with 15 other horses and ponies. Donations and more than two dozen volunteers help keep the place going, including one who traveled from Japan intent on learning skills she can take home with her. About three dozen riders from seven surrounding counties use the facility, keeping everyone “plenty busy,” says Wooley. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of work that gets done around here.” But there is always more to do: development is encroaching on the 17 acres the school rents, meaning it may soon be sold. So Wooley is beginning to look for a new home.

And though the transition — at age 53 — to a new career “has been kind of rough financially” for Wooley, she says she doesn’t regret the decision. The rewards of her work — from a young girl who smiled broadly the first time she held the reins to the growing confidence of a disabled dressage rider intent on making a future Paralympic team — “makes you proud to be human,” she says. “It brings out the best in people.”

They gallop and trot, whinny and neigh, capturing our imagination — and our hearts. Indeed, horses are said to have done more to change human history than any other domestic animal, once upon a time carrying explorers to new frontiers and mighty armies to great conquests.

Though their glory days may be in the past, these hoofed creatures continue to enthrall us, as the NATURE program HORSES demonstrates in sparkling detail. From the steppes of Mongolia, where children race at breakneck speeds perched on stallions ten times their size, to the fields of Georgia, where people confined to wheelchairs find new freedom in the saddle, HORSES highlights the many roles played by this multi-talented beast of burden. There are also rare glimpses of the world’s most endangered horse, and an inside look at the art of the horse whisperers, the trainers who through their gentle touch can transform a wild bucking bronco into a stately show horse.

But the star of the show is the animal that scientists call Equus caballus, the modern horse species that includes everything from miniature Shetland ponies to massive draft horses able to pull astounding loads. The horse we know today, however, evolved from an ancestor that was quite different.

More than 50 million years ago, a small fox-sized animal crept through the forests of North America, browsing on fruit and leaves. Its arched-back body was only about a foot high at the shoulder, and a long tail and short-snouted head probably gave it a distinctly dog-like look. In fact, its feet sported pads like a dog’s, except each toe ended in a tiny hoof instead of a claw. Interestingly, in modern horses, one toe has become the hoof, and the others remain as vestigial bumps higher up the leg.

When fossil hunters first discovered the bones of this creature a century ago, they named it Eohippus — “the dawn horse” — and believed it was the first link in an evolutionary chain that led directly to today’s horse. Indeed, many museums and textbooks still have displays and pictures showing this neat, predictable progression, with horses gradually getting larger, shifting from many toes to modern hooves, and gaining longer teeth able to grind down tough prairie grasses.

These days, however, researchers have a far more complex picture of horse evolution — and they have given the dawn horse a much less colorful name. While they agree that today’s horse probably arose from that smaller ancestor, the path was by no means direct. Instead, paleontologists have uncovered fossils that show that horse ancestors varied in size: some large early horses gave way later to smaller ones. They also discovered that some lines of horse-like animals alternated between many and few toes over time. In addition, some proto-horses once thought to be direct forefathers of the modern animals were revealed to be distantly related cousins — just one dead-end branch on a bushy family tree.

One branch, however, kept growing. About a million years ago, it produced an array of small pony-sized animals that galloped across ancient plains around the world in large herds. They probably behaved much as today’s wild horses do, using their flowing tails as remarkably accurate fly swatters and signal flags, and snorting the air for the smell of enemies and the scent of food.

Less than 10,000 years ago, however, many of these horse-like species became extinct, along with other browsing animals such as mammoths. Climate changes and over-hunting by humans may have been to blame, but no one knows for sure. The only survivors were horses in Asia and several zebras. In North America, however, horses were wiped out.

So where did the modern horses come from, the ones that spawned America’s cowboy myth? Historians believe that Spanish explorers brought the animals with them on their voyages to the New World in the 1500s. Let loose upon the land, they soon reclaimed the prairies that had once been theirs alone, producing vast herds of wild horses.

Even today, as HORSES shows, tens of thousands of wild horses roam the American West. To prevent the herds from destroying their habitat, the U.S. government captures hundreds each year and puts them up for adoption. For some of the proud new owners, the chance to ride a wild-born horse is a dream come true — and the continuation of an age-old relationship that has made the horse one of our most revered and fascinating animal partners.

Online content for Horses was originally posted November 1999.