The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

His strategy was not to beat his enemies at their own game but to use the advantages that came naturally to his people. Mongols rode horses from the age of three.

For more than three thousand years, semi-nomadic horsemen from the steppes settled, invaded, battled, dominated, and retreated from the temperate lands to the south. Regularly outnumbered, they won their victories through superior horsemanship, cavalry charges, careful planning, and valor. Their names—Huns, Alans, Goths, Turks, and Mongols—still in

The domestication of the horse ushered in a third age of globalization, the Equestrian Age, which I date from 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE. This period is typically labeled the Copper and Bronze ages, though I prefer to emphasize the role of the horse over that of the minerals. With the domesticated horse, rapid, long-distance overland transport and commun

It’s not that human nature suddenly changed and became egalitarian; men still tried to dominate others when they could get away with it. Rather, people armed with weapons and gossip created what Boehm calls “reverse dominance hierarchies” in which the rank and file band together to dominate and restrain would-be alpha males. (It’s uncannily similar