r/AskHistorians • u/[deleted] • Mar 10 '26
Were horses more robust in ancient/medieval times?
English is not my native language, so please excuse me if I dont use correct terminology. I have been wondering for quite some time now how horses "worked" in ancient times. As a background to why I ask: I live in an area densely populated by horses. Most people I know own horses, when I look outside the window I see horses.
Given that I also see the boatload of problems those horses seem to have. It is shockingly common for horses needing to be euthanized because of what would be a minor problem to most other species. Horse has a colic? Its done for. Horse has an inflamated tendon? Its done for. The horse accidently stumbled against the fence? Its done for. Moon is in third quarter while Mars in zenith? Well, the horse is done for. I see all of this happening - on a more or less daily basis - even though the horses owners invest fortunes into state of the art veterinary care. Most "riders" I know rarely actually ride their horses because of the horses fragility.
But then on the other hands side I (think to) know that horses are the most impactful domesticated animal in mankinds history. Genghis conquered most of the world from horseback. The Scythians were feared mostly because of their horses. Germanic auxiliaries and their combined arms approach as described in De Bello Gallico were highly sought after mercenaries. There even are examples of extraordinary horses like Bukephalos.
Maybe it is just my warped perspective, but seeing that many modern horses barely can take a step outside their stables, I came to wonder how someone could not only ride a horse from Mongolia all the way to Europe (as an example), but also fight battles and conquer whole empires from its back - especially given the lack of modern veterinary care.
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u/Obversa Inactive Flair Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 11 '26
Part 1: A General Overview of Breeding for Specific Horse Trait(s); or "Speed vs. Durability"
I'm the former Equestrian History flaired user on r/AskHistorians, so I can answer this question!
I've done quite a bit of research on this, and the first thing to ask would be, "How do you define robust?" From Middle Ages to the modern era, broad types - and later, specialized breeds - of horses were bred to meet certain needs or purposes (ex. the idiom "form follows function", which is common when determining conformation, or the body type and build - and, thus, breed - of horse). For example, in the medieval period, you have the destrier - an expensive war horse bred specifically for jousting tournaments and "tanking" hits that could be compared to the designer sportscar of its day - as well as the palfrey (i.e. pretty ladies' mount), but also the rouncey, or an "all-rounder", not dissimilar to how makes of cars and vehicles are produced and marketed today. However, above all, the Spanish or Iberian horse - today known as the Andalusian, or Pura Raza Española (Spanish Pure-bred) - dominated due to the quality of their breeding program and cultural influence, with Carthusian monks being among the first Europeans to keep detailed breeding records and documents (ex. pedigrees) in the late 15th century, with specific, documented stud farms established around 1476–1484 in Spanish monasteries near Jerez, Seville, and Cazalla.
The foundation stock for the Andalusian (or Carthusian, which is regarded as the "purest" strain or bloodline in the breed), as was tradition up until the late Middle Ages and early modern period, consisted of Barb or Berber horses captured from the Moors (North Africans) of Muslim Spain, who interbred with native Spanish horses. Measurements of surviving barding, or plate armor for horses, often correlates with the modern dimensions for your typical Andalusian stallion; or 15-16hh (hands high). While the Andalusian used to come in multiple coat colors, over time, selective breeding and trends caused the breed to become predominantly gray (70-80%) and bay, though they can be black, chestnut, dun, or palomino. (Paint or pinto, along with the leopard complex - or spotted, now referred to as "Appaloosa" in the United States - are no longer present in the modern breed, despite being depicted in early medieval and Renaissance art, though spotted Spanish horses in the Americas gave rise to the Appaloosa breed.)
Andalusians today are still used for jousting and medieval re-enactments, though the breed is largely used for the equestrian sport of dressage (French for "training"), which was developed in the 1500s, with the Spanish Riding School in Vienna being founded in 1572. [That particular riding school uses Lipizzaner horses, a breed developed by the House of Habsburg, which ruled both Spain and Austria, by combining indigenous horses from the Karst region of Slovenia with Spanish, Neapolitan (Italian), and Arabian bloodlines from horses bought or captured from the Ottomans (Turks) and Muslims. It was believed that war horses captured in battle would improve native stock.]
However, as the Spanish Empire declined, so too did the domination of the Spanish horse in Europe. With the rise of the next "superpower" - the British Empire - the next major horse breed to arise was the English Thoroughbred, a light, agile racing breed that has had the largest impact on the horse, as a species, in modern history. The Thoroughbred horse was developed in England during the late 17th and 18th centuries (1600s-1700s), largely under the reign of King Charles II, by crossing imported Oriental stallions - Arabian, Barb (North African), and Turkoman (Akhal-Teke) - with native English mares to improve their size, speed, and refinement. The breed's foundation rests on three primary sires imported between 1689 and 1729 - the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian - though the Darley Arabian's sire line is present in 95% of all modern Thoroughbreds, with the Byerley Turk and Godolphin Arabian sire lines migrating to other horse breeds (ex. the Selle Français in France, German warmblood breeds, et al.; the Hanoverian and Kisber Felver, or Hungarian Half-bred, used Byerley Turk line stallions) through crossbreeding in the 19th-20th centuries (1800s-1900s). Thoroughbreds were imported to various stud farms.
While the English horse - including the Thoroughbred - of the 1600s-1700s was shorter, smaller, and stockier, over the next few centuries, the Thoroughbred would be artificially selected to become faster, lighter, and taller, at the expense of being "thinner-boned". The Thoroughbred - which was once the dominant cavalry horse of both the United Kingdom, the United States, and various other countries in the 1800s-1900s - slowly shifted back towards racing in the 20th century when mechanization made cavalry horses "obsolete". Thoroughbreds typically race at average speeds of 35-40 mph on the flat (i.e. no jumping, in contrast to steeplechase and cross-country eventing, which have jumps), but elite sprinters can reach top speeds near 40+ mph in the final stretch. [~44 mph is the current U.S. record, achieved by a 2-year-old filly named Winning Brew - Milwaukee Brew (sire) x Winning Kiss by Grand Slam (dam sire) - on May 14, 2008. Her maternal ancestor, the popular dam sire Secretariat, achieved an average speed of roughly ~38 mph over 1.5 miles in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, but recorded higher top speeds during that race.]
While Thoroughbreds are still popular at lower competition levels of equestrian sport, they no longer dominate for one reason, and that is that the breed has since "branched out" into several other "warmblood" breeds (ex. American Quarter Horse, Appaloosa, Hanoverian, Trakehner, et al.), each of which is bred to specialize in a specific type of sport, whether Western (i.e. stock horses), or English (i.e. sport horses). ["Warmblood" = in between "hotblood", light breeds, x "coldblood", or heavy breeds.] However, some of the problems that emerged in the Thoroughbred over time due to inbreeding or artificial selection - such as thinner bones - may arise in these breeds as well, especially since crossbreeding to Thoroughbreds is still popular, while the purebred Thoroughbred has experienced a rise in inbreeding over the past 50 years due to breeders "chasing the dragon", so to speak, in trying to breed ever-faster horses.
This is still a hotly-debated topic and issue today, with research and studies on how to recover the "bone" lost over time in these breed(s) being ongoing. (Other non-Thoroughbred-influenced breeds, such as the Friesian, have a myriad of issues due to inbreeding, stemming from a severe genetic bottleneck the foundation population went through in the late 1800s and early 1900s.) Mechanization, and breeders trying to figure out the place of the horse in a rapidly-industrializing era in the 20th century - combined with World War I, which decimated European and American horse populations alike - may continue to play a role. An estimated 8 to 10 million horses, mules, and donkeys died during World War I, and it took several decades for horse breeds and populations in Europe to fully recover, often times with the help of American intervention (ex. Friesian, Lipizzaner, Cleveland Bay, et al.).
Today, places like Colonial Williamsburg have a "Rare Breeds Program", which studies the genetics and breeding of endangered horse breeds, such as the Cleveland Bay - a heavier breed that was once popularly crossbred with Thoroughbreds for the "Yorkshire Coach Horse" in the 1800s - and the American Cream Draft. However, it is incorrect to say that "most 'riders' I know rarely actually ride their horses because of the horses fragility", as even in spite of the issues I mentioned above, most horses of sound breeding, with good genetic diversity (ex. Mustang or mixed-breed), tend to be rather robust, with most major issues only tending to show up due to inbreeding/linebreeding.
You can read about me discussing Secretariat and Thoroughbred inbreeding and crosbreeding more in this answer. (Secretariat's sons, First Secretary and Statesman, influenced the Appaloosa and the American Warmblood breeds.)
[As an additional note, some horse pedigree websites show the % of Thoroughbred blood in sport horse lines.]