![]() ![]() To learn how horses make it possible to survive in the Altai, Thompson joins a family of Kazakh nomads at two critical times: late-summer harvest and mid-winter migration. And when the snow is deep, only horses can break a trail for the other animals to follow. They are transport, but their milk and meat also nourish the herding families. In this unforgiving mountain world, horses bring security and wealth. They winter in the valley bottoms, and they summer at the feet of glaciers, travelling hundreds of kilometres on each migration. Kazakh nomads migrate four times a year through the Altai Mountains, herding their yaks, goats and sheep on horseback, and bringing their camps of felt yurts (called ger) with them. Anthropologist and host Niobe Thompson travels to Mongolia, where high in the Altai Mountains he joins some of the last nomads on an epic winter migration. But in a world of borders and roads, horse nomads have virtually disappeared. ![]() The herding way of life was once common across much of the planet, and horses made it possible. In Equus: Story of the Horse, we meet some of them. In the age of machines, we still talk about “horsepower.” But horses have lost their central place in human life we now keep them as pets and companions.īut while their importance in the human world is fading, there are some horse cultures that survive today. In ways no other animal could, horses were our constant and irreplaceable companion. Horses transported us, pulled our loads, plowed out fields, herded our livestock, and carried us into battle (or sped us away from danger). For clever-but-slow Homo sapiens, the strength and speed of horses was a perfect complement. But when we harnessed horsepower - roughly 6,000 years ago - the human story changed forever. Our ancestors settled every corner of the planet on foot. When we got up on a horse, we could suddenly cover huge distances. “The domestication of the horse was the most important event in human history,” says Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev in the new documentary series Equus. ![]()
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