The mounted nations
So perhaps in Asia, the movements of tribes afoot may have been gradual overflows from crowded districts, and warfare a matter of cheery little forays to please the young. The possession of ponies gave a tremendous impetus to war and trade. From that time onward the tribes which were best mounted had a political future, and there was a slight handicap in favour of nations with Libyan Bays of fourteen hands two inches as compared with tribes using the Duns of Asia.
The Egyptians had horses in the eighteenth century B.C., the Israelites a few in 1580, the Hittites and Canaanites in 1540, the Assyrians not until 1500 B.C. Now Egypt, Canaan, Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia had no native horses. The Egyptians got horses from the Sahara, the Asiatics mainly through Armenia. I cannot believe that the crossing of small Duns with small Bays in any region bred heavy horses for the needs of war.
Heavy stock and strong food
A practical nation in the breeding trade would not rely for heavy stock upon the crossing of light strains. The way to get heavy stock is with strong food. Such oases of great deserts as Egypt and Mesopotamia had very little pasture, so long as their nations prospered. Every acre then was needed for strong grains. The well-mounted conquering nations were not those with splendid pasturage like Northern Africa or Southern Russia, but those which had no pasturage at all, who were compelled to feed horses on fodder more potent than any natural grass. The King's people might go without, but one may be perfectly certain that the King's horses lived on corn. What tribe or race of folk inherited Egypt or Mesopotamia mattered nothing, what strain of horses they owned mattered very little, but the people and the horses, for the time being in possession of irrigated oases walled about by deserts, raised the chariotry or the cavalry which ruled the surrounding world.
Chariots and cavalry
Each nation passed through a phase when chariotry were the only mounted troops of tactical use in war. The importing of the largest and heaviest horses to be had, the feeding of these with grain, and cross-breeding of the Dun types with the Bay produced by slow degrees a remount for use by cavalry.
Earliest in the running were the Hebrews, for about 1000 B.C. King Solomon built stables for 40,000 chariots, and as many as 12,000 cavalry. As early as 700 B.C. Armenia, being in contact with the Asiatic and Russian horse stocks, became a large horse breeding establishment, supplying remounts southward to Asia Minor, where in B.C. 560 King Croesus of Lydia had good cavalry, to Syria and Palestine, to Assyria, and to Persia down to the fourth century. But in the meantime shipping had grown in the Mediterranean, and ships of sufficient burden to carry African Bays began to supply the Greeks. From the pony chariots of the fourteenth century B.C. a steadily improving stock marked the rise of Hellas. The Achaeans of 1000 B.C. had imported Bays. The Greeks of 400 B.C. had cavalry. Then came the breeding of fine horses in Macedonia, and, after the death of Philip in B.C. 336, the mounted troops of his great son Alexander swept like a whirlwind across the Eastward deserts to where the monsoon rains made India populous. By this time cavalry had replaced the chariot. At the era of the Christ a chariot was still used when a victorious general entered a city in triumph. But the use of chariotry in war was limited to remote barbaric tribes such as the British.
The chariot