8-10-16
Vikings Possibly Spread Smooth-Riding Horses Around the World
Breaking Newstags: Vikings, DNA, horses, dressage
This week, equestrian athletes at the Rio Olympics are competing in an event called “dressage,” in which they guide their horses to perform complex combinations of different gaits, including the walk, trot and canter.
One type of footwork (or hoofwork, if you will) you likely won’t see is an “amble,” a sometimes comical four-beat gait that’s faster than a walk, slower than a gallop and well-suited for smooth, long rides.
Most horses can walk, trot, canter and gallop, but only certain breeds can amble. In a study published on Monday in Current Biology, scientists have proposed a hypothesis for how horses with this ability came to be found around the world. They suggest that ambling horses arose in Medieval England and then were brought to Iceland by Vikings, who subsequently spread the animals across Eurasia by trade.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel