Horses have been around since dinosaur times, they are one of the oldest mammals in the   world.

The horse's hoof is really a single, giant toenail!

Horses used to have four toes, and were 18 inches high (about the size of a medium dog)! That was about 50 million years ago. 30 million years ago, they got a little bigger and lost a toe. Seven million years ago they were down to one toe, like they have today and were almost as big as modern day horses.

Horses originally lived in America, and traveled to Europe about two million years ago. Then the American horses died out! Horses weren't seen in American again until the Spanish brought them back on ships 500 years ago.

When the Spanish came to America, the Native Americans who met them thought they were strange creatures, because they were on horses! They had never seen a person on a horse before.

The wild mustangs that roamed America came from horses that escaped from the big Spanish ranches 400 years ago.

Since prehistoric times, the words meaning "horse" have always been the same as words for "swift", or "speedy".

Horses were first tamed around 9,000 years ago!

When stirrups were invented people could suddenly use horses for many things, because they keep the rider in the saddle. Before that, people were always falling off! But with stirrups, you can stand up in the saddle, turn and duck. It also means you can do things like make the horse jump and change direction really quickly.

Stirrups were first used by nomads (traveling people) in Asia, hundreds of years before they were discovered in the West.

The first horseshoes were actual shoes, made out of rawhide and tied onto the horse's hooves and left to dry. They were pretty tough! The Romans were the first to put metal on their horse's shoes.

Without horseback riding, many people may still be wearing robes and soft cloth boots! It was riding horses that made people first invent pants so their legs would fit over a horse and hard boots to protect their feet from being stepped on.

Sidesaddles originated in the East. They had been popular in places like Persia because the women were supposed to be very modest and not very active. (What's up with that?!) It wasn't popular here until Queen Elizabeth started doing it in the late 1500s.

Sidesaddle-riding is becoming popular again! New, more comfortable and safe designs make it easier, and you can even jump in a sidesaddle! You have to carefully practice how you sit, though, or you can hurt your back or have other problems.

The Pony Express was a mail system in the Old West like the modern overnight-delivery mail, where riders rode without rest, trading horses at points along the way. It was the fastest mail system of its time, but it only lasted for a little more than a year before it was put out of business by the telegraph! Just as well--their horses only lived a quarter as long as normal horses, because they just used them up!

It was when tractors started being used everywhere, in the 1930s, that some of the really large breeds of horse (used for plowing) started to disappear.