Central Asia- center not periphery The web is abuzz with the discovery of a steppe city, Semiyarka on Kazakhstan's Irtysh river. As usual, this discovery "revolutionizes our understanding of ancient history". I don't agree.

A lovely review of Raiders, Rulers, and Traders in the Irish Field: "A thrilling, intelligent read that manages to be both educational and genuinely gripping. For anyone who has ever looked into a horse’s eye and glimpsed something ancient and unknowable, Raiderswill strike a deep chord."

I can't endorse much of Jeff Sach's views these days but this video strongly suggests that he has read "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders" If he comes to our 50th reunion I will ask him. www.facebook.com/share/v/1AMp...

A day does not go by without learning something new. Here is a link between stiletto heels, and Persian horsemanship. www.instagram.com/reel/DP4hU0n...

A fun day in Blue Grass country, meeting both history buffs and horse people at the Kentucky Book Fair.

Rock art represents the earliest interactions between humans and horses. asianreviewofbooks.com/rock-art-and...

“Rock Art and its Legacy in Myth and Art Petroglyphs from Eurasia, Arabia and North Africa” by Christophe Baumer and Teresa Weber

The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, never one to shrink from a challenge, visited Gobustan in Azerbaijan for two decades to prove his theory that the ancestors of today’s Scandinavians left behi…

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asianreviewofbooks.com Rock art represents some of humans earliest interactions with horses.

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Books, Arts & Culture

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Quail Ridge Books in North Hills, Raleigh, carries Raiders. Keep it in mind, Tar Heels, for stocking stuffers

Kazakhstan is creating a new institute "to support national livestock breeding and safeguard Kazakhstan’s rich equestrian heritage". Of the 4.2 million horses, only 40,000 belong to recognised breeds. Is this really a problem?

Learn more about the horse trade as the origin of the Silk Road in the latest issue of the Shanghai Literary Review. Issued first on paper, it will be available on line later.

A wonderfully receptive audience at the National Sporting Museum and Library in Middleburg, VA on October 23. The question on the table was, who domesticated whom? People or horses? At the end the jury was out.We also sold out, 50 copies of Raiders, Rulers, and Traders. Photos (c) Nancy Kleck

Daunt Books in London carries an eclectic selection of books.

Pope Leo XIV recently received as a gift a Polish Arabian horse, Proton. Since the days when the Poles and Ottoman Turks were neighbours, Poles have collected Arabians. They raised these horses on the steppe of Podolia, where once Cossacks and Tatars roamed. Podolian studs enjoyed great repute.

Why do horses figure in so many aspects of Chinese culture? Laurence writes about this in one of his detective novels. Maybe "Raiders" can clear up this mystery.

Laurence Westwood@lwestwoodauthor.bsky.social · 10mo ago

#histbookchat #BookSky 📚💜 I wrote about the Tea & Horse Agency keeping the Song Dynasty alive (militarily) in my first Magistrate Zhu novel, now for a greater history of the horse: Raiders, Rulers, & Traders (2024) by @davidchaffetz.bsky.social

If you are in Abu Dhabi you should visit this exhibition. Worthwhile! asianreviewofbooks.com/mamluks-louv...

The Mamluks at the Louvre

Even the idlest stroller will be awestruck by the beauty of Cairo’s City of the Dead. Yet this gem of 14th and 15th century architecture, a  Unesco World Heritage site,  leaves the visitor wonderin…

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Keep in mind that during the paleaolitic era, there may have been as many as 3,000,000 equids in Europe and 5,000 humans. No wonder the equine herds appeared to our ancestors like a food pantry. That explains why horses are the most common remains found in ancient camp sites.

In this piece, I explore what constitutes the frontier between Europe and Asia. This goes back to a train trip I made from Moscow to Beijing. The journey continues. engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-b...

The birth of Eastern Europe

The pioneering work of a 16th-century Polish geographer radically transformed Renaissance understandings of Europe's eastern frontiers, paving the way for Russia's later inclusion in the congress of E...

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Humans' fascination with horses long precedes riding. They are the most popular subject in parietal art, 30,000 yea Sacrificial horses have been found in human burials as early as 5000 BCE. That's 2,000 to 3,000 years before domestication and ridiing. What did horses signify to the ancients?

I enjoyed this snappy discussion with Peter Zablocki. For the time challenged, Peter cuts to the chase!

History Shorts w/ Peter Zablocki@historyshortspod.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Thank you to NY Times Bestselling author @davidchaffetz.bsky.social for a great conversation! Enjoy! LISTEN: directory.libsyn.com/episode/inde... ABOUT DAVID: raiders-rulers-and-traders.com BUY DAVID'S BOOK: www.amazon.com/Raiders-Rule... MORE INFORMATION: www.historyshortspodcast.com

Chatgpt reminds me of a rogue employee. As in the off-line world, sometimes you work for the rogue employee and not the other way around.

"new research revolutionizes our understanding of horses": Horse proteins found ancient cooking pots in Sicily. Really? Native horses abounded in Europe until around the 2nd millennium BCE. Why would bronze age fette di cavallo surprise anyone? #equinehistory #ancienteurope

All candidates for mayor of NYC agree on banning horse drawn carriages. Andrew Cuomo says "free the horses". As though people can afford to raise and feed work horses that cannot work. Since the Central Park now bans cars, it is safer than ever. The political class is just out of touch.

We almost didn't have horses. Imagine that. Without the horse, the history of Eurasia would have resembled that of sub-Saharan Africa, or Meso-America, with empires, yes, but not as we know them.

Friends in Washington, DC or in Virginia, take note. I am going to talk about the horse, how we changed them and how they changed us. This thought-provoking theme builds on my book, Raiders, Rulers and traders. www.nationalsporting.org/.../event_de...

The horse came to China from the west. The ancient Chinese word for horse "mra" (reconstructed form) recalls English "mare", and ancient Germanic/Celtic "marko". But why is our word female? As with "cow" we often name domesticates for the female. (source, Victor Mair, Language Log). #equinehistory

What happened to "L'Ami", the horse ridden by Alexander I of Russia during his triumphant entry into Paris in 1814? This, and many other unexpected horse stories, came up during my coffee with Jean-Louis Gouraud, one of Europe's greatest gurus on horses and horsemanship. #equinehistory,

Breeders spent centuries seeking desirable characteristics in their livestock, be it speed for horses or milk volume for cows. Recently discoveries show that a single genetic modification can provide these outcomes. CRISPR can be used to engineer gene in the foetus. This has big implications.

A processional orchestra with a chariot as well as a mounted dragon, Mathura, Jain stupa, 1st century BCE, New Delhi.

Imagine the diligence of 20-year old Judith Gautier, learning Chinese when she could speak it with only a few people - she could not dream of ever travelling there. She did it for art's sake. asianreviewofbooks.com/chinese-song...

“Chinese Songs in a French Key: How Judith Gautier’s Book of Jade Introduced Europe to Chinese Poetry” by Pauline Yu

“Untranslatable”, concluded the erudite, 17th-century Jesuit missionaries, referring to the glorious corpus of Chinese poetry. While they acknowledged that poetry played an outsized role in Chinese…

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The earliest act of selective breeding -- identifying calm horses. Maybe if you have been thrown from a horse you wonder if we ever managed to do this. But then try riding a zebra. Scientists identify the FPM1 gene as the critical, first step towards domestication. #equinehistory, #genetics