Warfare

The close relationship between horses and humans has changed us both. People have remade horses, creating dozens of breeds in our efforts to make horses faster, stronger, bigger, or smaller.

But horses have also changed us. The ways we travel, trade, play, work—and even fight wars—have all been profoundly shaped by our use of horses. For example, a warrior on horseback or horse-drawn chariot was the ultimate weapon for more than 3,000 years of our history. Time after time, from Asia to Europe to the Americas, the use of horses in war has changed the balance of power between civilizations.

Around 900 B.C., the Scythians were among the first mounted archers and fighters. This group of nomadic Asian warriors repeatedly raided the ancient Greeks, who’d never before seen a person on horseback.
For roughly a thousand years, from about the 800s to the late 1800s, warfare in Japan was dominated by samurai, an elite class of warriors who used horses as their special weapons.
In 1532, 168 Spanish soldiers—including 62 on horseback—won the battle against 80,000 Inca foot soldiers by attacking the crowd on horseback and slicing through their quilted armor with steel weapons.

Horses continued to define military tactics well into the 1900s, until these animals finally became outmoded by machine guns, tanks, airplanes, and other modern weapons.