The dawn horse was slow to evolve. Mesohippus adapted its teeth to grazing. Parahippus had longer legs for speed. By the Pleistocene epoch, one million years ago, the family (Equidae) had found its true vessel: Equus, the sole surviving genus. Modern species of Equus include the donkey, the zebra, and the wild Asian onager and kiang.
As horses evolved, they migrated from North America over now-vanished land bridges. During the Ice Age and its attendant floods, the strain vanished from the Americas. Stone Age horses inhabited only Africa, Asia and Europe.
The horse was one fo the last animals to suffer domestication. It was first tamed by Asian nomads almost 4,500 years ago. Different civilizations isolated differnt traits, developing strains to satisfy specific needs. They bred strong horses for hauling, agile horses for hunting, fast horses for racing, bellicose horses for killing their neighbors. Horses didn't return to America until 1493, when Columbus brought a handful on his second voyage. They didn't return en masse until 1519, with the conquistadors.
The Indians had never seen horses. They coveted them instantly, and were soon trading with the Spaniards for them. Many Spanish horses fled or strayed, returned to the wild, began roaming the plains in vast herds, mimicking their forebears. All the horses now living, except for the nearly extinct Mongolian wild horse, are decended from tame strains.
Today, there are at least sixty breeds of domestic horse. The Arabian is the oldest, the Thoroughbred one of the newest. The Thoroughbred was developed in England less than 250 years ago. During the reign of Charles II, oriental stallions were imported to the British Isles, to replenish stocks depleted during the War of the Roses. Three of these sires proved so dominant that today every living Thoroughbred decends from at least one of them. They are the foundation males.
All three of them came to England chimerically.
The Darely Arabian was discovered in Syria in 1704 by Thomas Darely, the British consul stationed in Aleppo. A four-year-old bay with a white blaze and three white feet, he was a horse of unprecedented elegance.
The Byerly Turk was a spoil of war. He was captured by a certain Captain Byerly when England tood Buda from the Turks in 1686-87. Byerly rode him at the battle of the Boyne, a gesture of grandiose distain, before sending him home to England to stud.
The Godolphin Barb's ancestry is more fugitive. He was called a Barb because he resembled the horse of Morocco's Barbary Coast. But nobody really knew where he came from. He was bought by Lord Godolphin from Edward Coke of Longford Hall, Derbyshire, in the lat 1720s. Coke alledgedly found him in Paris pulling a water cart.
Horses were first employed in war, then in war's logical extension-sport. Races were carded in Babylonia, in Egypt, in Syria. This is know from tablets. Horse-drawn chariots embellish Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian art.
The earliest racing manual was composed in 1500 BC, by Kikkidis of Mitanni, a Hittite figureman.
The first documented chariot race appeared in the Illiad. Achilles arranged it as part of Petrochus' funeral. First prize: one lady.
Chariot races were introduced to the Olympics in 680 BC. In the games of 642, men first raced on horseback. The Greeks love racing, dropped bundles on it. In The Clouds Aristophanes savaged Pheidippides, a dissollute stripling who bankrupted his father with bum tips.
But the pastime really took hold in Rome, among those most dissolute of blind-stabbers, the emperors. Tarquinus Prisius initiated annual racing in the Circus Mazimus. Under Caligula, the chariots competed from dawn to dusk. Professionals appeared, peasant types with strong whip hands, hot for celebrity. Claudius was an incurable high roller. Nero, said his biographer, Suetonius, "had from his childhood and extravagant passion for horses; his constant talk was of the Circensian races." Still Domitian was the absolute topper; he staged contests daily during his reign.
Caesar brought racing to Britain in 55 BC. His medium was the speedy Roman horse, bred principally in North Africa. In 1174, Henry II built the first track specifically for horseracing, at Smithfield, outside the gates of London. Mounted horses competed over a four-mile course, the former chariot-race distance. The first recorded race for money occured during the reign of Richard II (1189-99). In it, "divers Knights" negotiated a three-mile course for "forty pounds of ready gold."
The first anual meeting was held at Chester in 1512. The winner recieved a wooden ball with a floral design, the sport's maiden trophy. James I hastened the rise of English racing through his sponsorship of Epsom and Newmarket. Charles II, the true "father of the British tuf," frequently rode his own horses to victory.
Charles' representatives established the sport in the colonies. Richard Nicolls, New York's royal governor, sponsored America's first formal meeting in February 1665, at a two-mile course on Hempstead Plains. Nicolls called his venue Newmarket, after its English antecedent. Racing spread quickly to New Jersey, Pennslyvania, and the Carolinas. By 1680, there were five tracks in Virginia. The first American strip specifially for Thoroughbreds was the Union Course, built on Long Island in 1821 and the first extended race meeting was held at Saratoga in 1864.
The Thoroughbred often achieves seventeen hands now, or five and a half feet in human terms. It can weigh 1200 pounds and has a twenty-foot stride when running. It sees only shadows, never colors; but its nose surveys the landscape for miles, its ears detect whispers across canyons. Its normal temperature is 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Its blood is thicker and warmer than other horses'. It is a force of nature, transformed into an industry. This force is what draws us to the track, even if we don't quite realize it: this animal bond - this soulful physicality - this tribal memory - this Equus.