How Did Humans Domesticate Horses?

The horse evolved in North America, walked to Asia across a land bridge, went extinct in its own homeland, and came back four hundred years ago on a Spanish ship. Almost everything else you were taught about its domestication was overturned in the last ten years. What You Will Learn in This Video? - The Animal Built By Grass: Understand why grass is essentially glass dust, how it produced teeth that never stop growing and a foot reduced to a single enormous toenail, and why a horse can sleep standing up. - The Przewalski Shock: Discover why the horses of Botai are not our ancestors at all, how the animal sold for a century as the last wild horse on Earth turned out to be a feral descendant of the first tamed ones, and what that leaves unexplained. - A Stronger Back And A Longer Fuse: Explore the DOM2 lineage that appeared on the lower Volga around 2200 BC and replaced every other horse from Spain to Mongolia in three centuries, and the two genes, GSDMC and ZFPM1, that made it possible to sit on a prey animal. - Why Not Zebras: Learn why the Sumerians bred donkey and wild ass hybrids and abandoned them instantly, why wealthy Victorians could never domesticate a zebra, and why the real answer is social structure rather than speed. - Bits, Chariots And Stirrups: Uncover the gap in a horse's teeth that happens to be a handle, the spoked wheels in the Sintashta graves, the army Han China sent across a desert for breeding stock, and the loop of metal that turned a rider into six hundred kilos of moving lance. - Horsepower, Literally: Find out how James Watt invented a unit to sell steam engines against the animal it replaced, why 1900 New York was a public health emergency, and why gunpowder did not end cavalry but the engine did. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:19 An American Animal 3:56 Eight Thousand Kilometres Of Grass 5:48 Botai 6:40 The Przewalski Shock 7:51 The Real Ancestor 9:28 A Stronger Back, A Longer Fuse 11:49 Why Not Zebras 14:54 The Gap In The Teeth 15:46 Sintashta 16:50 Heavenly Horses 18:10 Did They Ride 19:10 The Stirrup 20:13 No Cities To Besiege 22:38 The Padded Collar 25:00 The Horse Goes Home 26:51 One Horsepower 27:34 The Engine If this deep dive into genetics, war and power blew your mind, smash the like button, subscribe for more breakdowns, and leave a comment telling us what topic to cover next!