The history of the ancestors of horses is now well known. The earlier ancestors of the horse is called Eohippus. The name Eohippus means dawn horse. Eohippus was a small animal, about the size of a fox. It had four toes on its front feet and three on the hind feet. The Eohippus lived about fifty million years ago in the plains of the United States.
After Eohippus came an animal called Mesohippus, which means middle horse. The Mesohippus was bigger than Eohippus. It was about the size of a collie dog. This horse had lost the extra toe on it's front feet. Gradually, as the horse developed further, it lost the extra toes on its front and hind feet. The side toes became only short bones along the leg.
The horse's teeth also changed and became better fitted for eating grass. In comparison to a child's teeth being replaced with their adult teeth. By the time of the Ice Age, this animal was like our modern horse had developed.
The earliest horses lived in what is now the By United States. Their descendants spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. By the Ice they lived on all the continents except Australia. For some reason, horses afterwards disappeared from the Western Hemisphere. When the first settlers came to North America, they found no horses on this continent.
The Indians didn't know about horses until the Spaniards under Hernando Cortez came to Mexico in 1519. The later explorers also used horses. Some of their horses may have been left behind. They were probably the ancestors of the so called wild mustang horses of the western plains.
At first the Indians were afraid of the horses. This helped the Spaniards to conquer the Indians. The Indians began to use the animal until after 1600, although they didn't use them for many years. The horse became very important in the lives of the Indians on the Western plains. The Indians used horses in hunting buffalo, in moving the tribe from place to place and in war with other tribes and with the white man.
Man has used the horse since before the time in history. At first he hunted the horse and ate it's meat. It's not known exactly when the horse was tamed. But Genesis, the first book of the Bible, mentions the use of horses for pulling their war chariots. The early Greeks and Romans were expert horsemen.
They used horses for sports, racing and for war. Soldiers could move faster from place to place when they used horses. Soldiers mounted on horses could often charge and defeat enemy foot solders. Complete armies using horses made many successful invasions. As you can see, the life of a horse is not much different from you and me!
Gary was raised in a family that loved and worked horses. He was a race horse jockey and his father was a horse shoer and a horse trader. The whole family each had their own horse and at times more than one. Nowadays' there are issues with the mustangs and burrows in our Western States. They're part of our American Heritage just as well as the bald eagle, buffalo, black bear and grizzly bear, just to name a few. Let your voice be heard since the mustangs can't speak for themselves! See for yourself here: http://madeleinepickens.com/
http://savingamericasmustangs.org/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=G_Wayne_Cooper
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