For millennia, the endless grasslands and great deserts of the world – from the Eurasian Steppe to the Great Plains and the Australian Outback – served as formidable barriers.

Horses changed that – forever.

Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History explores how four dynamic pulses (hoof ‘beats’) in the story of humans and horses – their initial domestication, the invention of horse transport, the explosive shift to mounted riding, and their dispersal into the New World – transformed ancient societies and created the world we live in today. 

A Comanche petroglyph in southern Colorado is shown on a rock. The rock is tan with a slightly blue hue.

Comanche petroglyph of horse and rider in southern Colorado

A painted mural depicts mounted horse messengers and hunters from the tombs at Jiayuguan, Gansu, c. 3rd century CE

Murals depicting mounted horse messengers and hunters from the tombs at Jiayuguan, Gansu, c. 3rd century CE

Drawing on Indigenous perspectives, ancient DNA, and new research from Mongolia to the Great Plains and beyond, Taylor guides readers through the major discoveries that have placed the horse at the origins of globalization, trade, biological exchange, and social inequality. Hoof Beats transforms our understanding of both horses and humanity's ancient past and asks us to consider what our relationship with horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.

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  • "Working on three continents with geneticists, historians, anthropologists, and Indigenous people, William Taylor has been pursuing for more than a decade the story of how people and horses came together. This is a crisp, thoughtful survey of one of the most exciting new areas in the study of the human past, unraveling the secrets of one of our species’ oldest, deepest, and most essential relationships."

    — Charles C. Mann, author of “1491” and “The Wizard and the Prophet”

  • "From prehistoric times to the modern era, Taylor weaves together science and history to present the great epic of the horse and its impact on the world and civilization.  The horse and its rider changed nearly every aspect of human culture, from the way people produced food, communicated, and traded to the way they made war.  Hoof Beats gives us all of world history through one important creature - the drama of the horse!"

    —Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

  • “For millennia, historians have recounted the story of the horse in bits and pieces, much of it infused with myth and romance. In this book William Taylor rekindles the epic story of humankind’s most important partner, weaving a sweeping new tale that replaces outdated thinking with the latest scientific revelations and fills a gaping hole in the literature.”

    — Peter Gwin, Senior Editor, National Geographic

  • “Delivered in beautiful and accessible prose that gallops, prances, and saunters with equine majesty, this genre-bending book is a compelling global history of the world people and horses made together.  A captivating story that horse lovers, scholars, teachers, students, and the general public will find irresistible.”

    — Akin Ogundiran, author of The Yoruba: A New History

  • “A tremendous feat. Taylor integrates a vast quantity of different kinds of data to illustrate how the relationship between humans and horses, past and present, has shaped the world we live in today—and tells a terrific story along the way.”

    — Emily Lena Jones, author of Questioning Rebound: People and Environmental Change in the Protohistoric and Early Historic Americas

  • "The most comprehensive narrative to date about the relationship between humans and horses, a panoramic analysis of how the noble equid has led us to where we are today. No other book so succinctly describes the animal’s role in the development of the global community."

    — Will Grant, author of The Last Ride of the Pony Express