Riding horses seems to be part of human nature: Indians, Hussars, Romans, Samurais, Gauchos, Cowboys, Afghans, queens, Mexican bandoleros and so on, all mount or mounted horses in one way or another. But horseriding skills have indeed an origin; prehistoric men did not ride horses and the development of domestication techniques in the case of equids is one one of the landmarks in human development as an intelligent species.

The reason is that the domestication of horses provided people for the first time with motive power greater than their own, enabling mankind to develop agriculture, construction works and transportation. The second reason is that it allowed humans to travel faster than on their own feet. While this may seem quite a small thing today, in reality it transformed us from another species with some more intelligence than others into really social beings, able to develop town, cities, commerce and technology.

One of the most relevant figures in this process was a man called Kikuli Asussani, or Kikuli the domesticator; he was the first person to write a manual on how to domesticate horses, how to train them for racing, display as well as military charioteering.Mr. Kikuli's work significance is similar to that of Johannes Gutenberg or Albert Einstein regarding the fact that it changed humankind forever.



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