HORSE RIDING

Horse riding in other words is also known as Equestrianism more often known
horseback riding in American English or horse riding in British English. It refers to the
skill of riding, driving, steeple chasing or vaulting with horses. This broad description
includes the use of horses for practical working purposes, transportation, recreational
activities, artistic or cultural exercises, and competitive sport.

Riding horses is fun, but there are many points that you should know before you start to
ride. First of all, you should learn how to care for a horse. Next, you should know how to
train an unbroken horse. Finally, you can learn how to really ride.

Near the beginning of the Iron Age, about 800 BC, people in Central Asia began to ride
horses more instead of just having them pull wagons. Once some people were riding
horses, everybody wanted to do it. On horseback, you could go much faster than
anybody had ever gone before. Riding horses was a lot of fun, but also you could carry
messages much faster. Riding horses was much safer than walking places; you could
escape from attackers if you had a horse (and they didn't). If you could ride and fight at
the same time, you had a strong cavalry that could win battles. Very soon horse-riding
spread from Central Asia all across the rest of Asia, Europe, and North Africa.
Farmers didn't usually use horses for plowing in the ancient world (they usually used
oxen instead, or simply turned over the soil by hand). Horses were too expensive, and
they needed better quality food than oxen. Also, no good harness arrangement for
horses was invented until about 200 BC, when one was invented in China.

Women began to ride horses almost as soon as men, as shown in this Persian carving
from 500 BC. Like men, they also fought from horseback as cavalry, at least in Central
Asia. People were riding horses in China, further east, by the 300s BC (according to
David Graff). The rise of the Silk Road about this time allowed Central Asian horse
breeders to sell many more horses to China and to the Hellenistic world, and horses
may have become more common as a result. Horses continued to be popular both to
pull wagons and to ride, all across Asia and Europe throughout antiquity and the Middle
Ages.

The invention of better camel saddles about 500 AD encouraged people to switch from
horses to camels, but then the great medieval victories of Central Asian cavalry, first of
the Turks and then of the Mongols, between 800 and 1300, made horses popular again.