What if Horses Never Existed? 

Happy 2019 everyone. This video was supposed to be out weeks ago, but you know how this time of year goes. Perhaps I'll talk about if horses just stayed in North America instead of Asia, and how that'd change colonization. But that's a tale for another day.

Before Horses were a thing we used pigs and carrots on a fishing pole.

He didn't address the issue of how the Trojan Horse would look like. :(

Horses: Not Existing* Mongols: Terrified Screaming*

We would have a movie called EQUESTRIAN PARK

Finally a new video after you spent days just horsin arou-I can’t do it. It’s not worth a pun that bad.

That would be unepic

What about the Incan empire in south America? They had no horses and had a huge system of runner messengers that would run from one outpost to another outpost until the message was delivered

Aztecs and Incas: Laughs in not being affected*

You forgot to mention probably the most impactful void left if there were no horses -- ancient Indo-European/Aryan peoples wouldn't have been able to expand as effectively into the Iranian plateau, northern India and Europe without them. Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, Germanic languages and all their derivative languages (English, Hindi/Urdu, French, Iranic languages, German, Spanish, etc) wouldn't even exist, because the proto-Indo-European language would've been confined to the eastern European steppes. Horses were incredibly vital to the Indo-Europeans, as evidenced by the ritualistic and divine importance of horses in the Hindu Vedas, Greek/Roman and Norse mythology, and the fact that the Hittites used them in chariot warfare.

If horses didn’t exist, no shrinking ballsacks in RDR2.

I think a more interesting scernario would be if horses never went extinct in the Americas

Here's a good alternate history scenario: What if early humans domesticated woolly mammoths/ what if the australian aboriginal people domesticated tasmanian tigers instead of dogs?

Traveling across tamriel would be a lot harder

_Gengis Khan has already touched the dislike button_

I need a “What if Sweden won the Great Northern War”... p l e a s e .

Alexander the great Genghis Khan Jan III Sobieski, winged hussars Blücher,Murat,Lasalle Van der linde gang touched the dislike button

We'd have a bunch of weirdos talking about the latest episode of My Little Cow.

Given the horse itself took a lot of breeding to reach a size and state people could ride it, it does make you wonder what sort of species of ox or maybe deer would have been bred into something to fill a similar role and what it would look like.

Way too many changes to imagine. One of the rare instances where an alternate history scenario would really be mind boggling.

So basically our timeline is the one where pegasus never existed.

Hi, just a little fyi, doesn't really matter but... Calvary = The hill Jesus was crucified on. Cavalry = horse-mounted soldiers Calvary ≠ Cavalry

We would tame bears and use them as mounts instead. Note: this is awesome. *[Bear Cavalry Intensifies]*

Cavalry. Not Calvary.

Wait, they made horses from Red Dead Redemption II a real thing?!?

What if alaska and north east asia was still connected

0:32 *Based off the existence of Flat Earthers, I strongly disagree*

I loved this video! Especially since I am a horse rider and know how special horses are and how much they are in touch with us as humans.

*Hasbro:* I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that.

Huns, mongols, turks have left the chat.

*The Aryans have left the server*

"a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

This video sort of misses a huge opportunity, in that we already have examples of how complex societies would develop without horses: Precolumbian civilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andes. In Mesoamerica, the lack of horses had a few impacts: Directly governed empires were much rarer, with most larger states and Empires, such as the Aztec, The Zapotec kingdom out of Monte Alban, the Mixtec Empire out of Tututepec, the various superower Maya city-states, and presumably the Toltecs and Teotihuacan, and various other smaller regional kindoms all ruled indirectly (the only notable example which did have direct imperial rule was the Purepecha Empire, rival to the Aztec). The specifics varied, but they either making subservient cites merely pay tribute but still self rule as vassals, by installing rulers, and/or by just cementing political influence via political marriages, prestige, and genelogical ancestry to mythologized or older respected states. Sieges were rarer as well, since as all supplies on military campaigns needed to be carried by porters, who also needed their own supplies, setting a hard cap on how long you could be out on campaigns before needing to resupply., vs pack animals being ablr to graze. A larger emphasis was put on armies outnumbering their enemies then in Eurasia due to the lack of calvary, and as a result of all of this, warfare needed to be seasonal: Soldiers would go on campaign in winters, but would return home to tend to farms in the summer. Finally, this is a bit more speculatory on my part then the above, but it may have been a factor for the lack of metal weapons and armor. The Mesoamericans could smelt bronze, but didn't use it in warfare. A part of this is likely due to the climate: Even the Conquistadors largerly gave up their steel armor due to the heat and humidity in favor of various native kinds, such as Ichcahuipilli; and if that hindered the development of metal armor, metal weapons would be as well since Obsidian's main detriment compared to metal weapons, it's durability, wouldn't be as much of a problem without metal armor it needs to get past. But the logistical issues of going on campaigns I mention above is also a likely factor: Metal weapons and armor are harder to replace out in the field, wheras wood and stone weapons are much easier to repair and produce, and given the logistical hurdles long distance campaigns faced without horses, the latter might have been prefferable.

*Central Asia wants to know your location*

Lol I was watching your vids with no earbuds and my cat loves you voice haha He jumped up on my bed and just closed his eyes and listened. He purred so loud lol

(Before watching video) WAR ELEPHANTS and RHINOS of course. **exists video*** **publishes a book**

Can you do a follow up about if horses remained in the Americas? Maybe the few remaining weren’t hunted by the new people, or maybe they just fared better during the ice age and never went extinct in the Americas. How much more would they be able to advance? Would the Europeans still conquer and colonize them?

In fact , in ancient Mesopotamia they would used a donkey for chariots

What if the Megafauna never dead out/were hunted to extinction in North America?

i love horses cant imagen life without them

Then Red Dead Redemption 2 would have cars instead

Now this is podracing

You're the reason my channel has Hub in it so thanks for the idea :)

Horse: Exists Man: *That's free real estate*

What if RU-vid wasn't bought by Google?

Perhaps camels, donkeys (if there would be any?), or oxen would have been selectively bred to fill that niche, just look at what we did with dogs. Or elephants, maybe bred to be smaller for speed and big ones for heavy units.

"humans are the smartest beings on earth." Clearly someones never listened to the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

The way you did the brains made them look like upside down yelling faces and I love it

*Genghis Khan has left the chat*

*_Indian war elephants intensify_* Btw. you could do the video "What if Pangaea never broke apart?" _Edit: Didn't see you already did that_

The horses actually migrated out of North America much much earlier than you suggested. The American Pleistocene extinct, I believe, was mostly caused by the hunting of mastodons, mammoths, and sloths, the slowest animals that gave the most meat. with their removing, the landscape changes, as does in Africa when a region loses elephants. Moist savanna becomes dry deciduous forest. Much of eastern US is composed of many acres of oak hickory forest and interspersed among the range is species like honey locust, kentucky coffee tree, osage orange, etc, which were either thorny or toxic plants meant to exist in a savanna created by mastodons and mammoths and sloths. With the extinction of these animals, the change of cover type helped end the horses, camals, llamas, the other pronghorn species that used to exist, and their carnivores, a cheetah type cat, lions, sabertooths, jaguars, dire wolves, short faced bears, teratorn birds, etc. The ice age alone did not kill these species as the ice age had been going on for some time and had already experienced 3 other interglacial periods like we have today and they survived all that. It was just the removal a few species that maintained the habitats that caused the ecological collapse in the Americas. Eurasia had more large animals because when early humans arrived on the scene, they were more primitive and animals had time to adapt. And Africa has the most megafauna because they adapted to the earliest of humans.

What of horses never existed? Answer: Europeans wouldn’t exist. Let me explain. Proto-Indo-Europeans were the first to domesticate horses on the grassy plains of the Eurasian Steppe. Proto-Indo-Europeans used their height, strength, and *horses* to conquer Europe. Modern day Europeans are a mix of three ancient populations- Western Hunter-Gatherers, Anatolian Farmers, and *Proto-Indo-Europeans* Without the horse Proto-Indo-Europeans would never conquer Europe thereby never giving their DNA to Europeans which in turn means Europeans as we know them never exist.

*_What if Big Chungus never became a meme?_*

since Rome kinda got its highly Militarized society thanks to a Gaulish Raid of Footman and since the Romans had not much to do with the Greek world at their early years and since the Romans were never good Horseman in the first place, relying mostly on their heavy infantry This might be Very good news for them If the Roman Republic would still be founded , it would Probably even become more Powerful with their Heavy unflankable Infantry , and their huge variation of Artillery (ya know stuff like Manuballista and whatnot ) not to mention their ridiculously fast Marching Speed

That ending was fantastic! Great video!

What if Nuclear Weapons never existed ?

Calvary is the place where the Romans Crucified Jesus Christ. Cavalry is a mobile military unit.

Absolutely fascinating video

When you copy of The Atlantropa Articles finnaly arrives "I've been looking forward to this"

They switched to the Asian server, because the NA server is filled with hackers.

My Kingdom for a Horse!

NordVPN tried to charge me $84 for a free trial

Damn, that made me shed a tear

Probably one change of the major turning points of man's history actually

Please do 'What if Britain wasn't an island?'

Do “What if the Queen of England didn’t die on January 5th, 2019?”

Imagine using ostriches instead of horses. Without horses, I think there would be a lot more pressure on using reduction gears, and later even gearboxes, to speed up common cattle, into what could only be called cattle-powered cars and trucks, which would also allow trains to appear much sooner than in our world. Imagine using cement and even wood to keep cattle-powered cars going a certain way, the cement making grooves in which wide oval (side-to-side) wheels to ride, so every time they get too close to getting off track, they're gently guided back to the middle of the track. Not only that, but bicycles, tricycles, and quadcycles/quadricycles would be a lot more popular, since people would not need to worry about an animal's whims when traveling, as long as they don't carry too much weight for long distances of not-flat not-straight roads. Imagine a commuter land train (somewhat similar to the Arctic Land Train but mostly wooden and with carts/wagons carrying 6-12 people pedaling) being the precursor of buses, and similar trains used to get people in and out of cities at much higher speeds. Heck, people could even get the chance to pedal as paying for the ticket, especially if there's an extra load being carried. Pedaling alone could be the beginning of the industrial revolution in an alternative timeline, because a set of attachments for the bikes could make them kickstart the wave of curiosity which gave birth to the widespread concept of machines working instead of humans. Examples of that would start with the following pedal-engine attachments for those vehicles: Grindstone for sharpening knives and axes, washing machine so you don't need to spend as much time and energy washing, grains mill for quickly turning your grains into flour, mixer for making sauces and doughs, blender for mincing tings much easier, fans for the hot weather and for replacing bellows, saws for wood and circular knives for cutting food thinner in shops (especially for meats) and restaurants, dough rollers for pasta and for crushing some vegetables (i.e. green onions or other soft plant stalks), and even pumps for getting water in a water tower, from which pipes made from wood and/or ceramics and hoses made from leather and resin could be used to connect to a sink with the tap being pushed in to allow water to flow out, and a hook on a rope which can be coiled around a stick could ge the water flow fixed (at least until the water in the water tower got too low). I can already imagine a group of invaders riding ostriches, while the defenders receive cavalry support which is riding bicycles, with infantry being deployed behind the bicycles with pedal-powered trucks in which half the people pedal so the other half are in top shape when they're on the field, and the pedaler then rest and act as a resupply point, or shooting arrows at the approaching enemies while retreating.

We’d never be able to put them in the back, nor attach the horse tack. Of course, our hats would still be matte black and we’d still have had the boots that are black to match, but we’d never be able to ride any horses, nor take them to the old town road.

51 Indo-Europeans, Polish and Hungarian hussars, Egyptian charioteers, Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish horsemen, Macedonian cavalry, Scythian Amazons, Native American hunters, medieval knights, cowboys, Mongol archers, Hun soldiers, and Scots Greys disliked this video.

Bronies wouldn't be a thing lol

A terrific idea wonderfully presented. Bravo.

I got your book as a gift for Christmas. Just wanted to say kudos for a well written book but did not see that ending coming, though bro. it was brutal!! for me though, I hope you keep up your writing though, your first book was really good.

Then we would call an Uber

you butchered the names for Macedonia and Kazakhstan

This video seems to forget Zebras and donkeys exist. Donkeys can't carry as much as a horse, but they can still get you around faster than walking. And while zebras are very *difficult* to tame, it has been done before. And I can imagine people breeding zebras to be more cooperative in a world without horses.

LOL I can just imagine victorian london, with loads of COWS AND DONKEYS SLOWLEY MOVING CARTS

*Roman Empire has left* *Ottoman Empire has left* *Byzantium has left* *Mongol Empire has left*

The winged hussars would not have arrived, and they wouldn't be hussars either.

Hey Cidy,I went and had my dad get your book for me on christmas and personally I havnt had much time to read it I'm only about 50 pages in but so far I'm in love with this book,you have done an amazing job on it and I hope your able to write more amazing books in the future,you have my support!

Got a horse competition ad before this.

QUIT HORSIN' AROUND! -Ninja 2018 (epic gamer moments)

McDonald’s burgers would go out of business

In other words a rigth creature in the wrong place can make all the difrece

Two theories, one being that i believe naval civilizations would become the most predominant world powers in this alternative timeline and that in some way, i believe the invention of vehicles may have been accelerated because of the need to solve a massive problem for all civilizations at the time, Transportation. I could see slave cranked wood carts, or other animals such as elephants and dogs filling some gaps but in overall summary i believe you are completely correct, the world and empires we know today would be completely transformed if in existence at all. Thanks for another great video.

Then we wouldn't have bojack horseman

*What if horses never existed?* We wouldn't know how powerful our motors are. P.S. Do a collaboration with TierZoo?

Cody: Horses are the most important animal in human history Dogs: I'm I a joke to you

There's a 1966 alternate history novel called "The Gate of Time", where a native american WW2 combat pilot ends up in a parallel Earth where the american continent doesn't exist (it's underwater), meaning not only that horses (and anything related to them) don't exist in that reality, but also the ancestors of Native Americans moved west instead of going across the (here non existent) Bering Strait. Also, a Luftwaffe pilot ends up there too, shenanigans ensue and the ending is.... unexpected, to say the least.

"What if Horses Never Existed?" Then the Proto-Indo-Europeans would have used spaceships instead.

What would Tesco do then?

The domestication and specialized breeding of horses and dogs were likely the things that helped to develop the human race faster than other early accomplishments. They are animals that are willing to live with, and serve humans.

your videos is what I always think because I like alternate history of things that happened and not happened... like your videos man.

There are so many minority tribes in Siberia riding elks. They must be alternative. What else? Camel. Elephant. Even the bull can be counted.

*cries in mongol*

To be honest i think people wouldve used other animals like ox or camels to transport goods, fight in wars, and communicate just that they wouldve been slower

NordVPN: Want me to sponsor you? Alternate History: Yes! I'll include you in a video about if horses didn't exist! NordVPN: Wait what-

8:46 Nice GoT reference. If horses didn't exist we could just ride red elk instead. Also, the world wouldn't have MLP, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's cavalry Cody, not calvary. Calvary is the hill where Jesus was crucified.

Well, That Rohan Cavalry Scene in The Lord of the Rings will just be Rohans running on foot

I really like this video. Far different than your usual.