Domestication
Prerquisites
Requires:
- Horse Riding
- Bronze Working
Statistics
Gives:
- Light Cavalry
- War Elephant
Gameplay
Animals were not only domesticated, they were improved through animal husbandry. By breeding bigger horses men could mount them and form Light Cavalry as scouts and skirmishers. Where they are available, the even larger War Elephant unit can be formed to terrorize your enemies.
Historical
People manipulate their environment: it is one of the most salient and common features of all human groups. The physical manipulations of engineering, physics, architecture, etc. may be the most immediately spectacular, but much more fundamental has been man’s manipulation of the biological world. Changing animals to better suit people’s needs is Animal Husbandry, and it started as soon as people domesticated animals. Between 12,000 and 6000 BC dogs, goats, sheep, and cattle (in that order) began to be changed to make them more useful to people. The most dramatic product of animal husbandry, however, was the domestication and subsequent manipulation of the horse. Originally a food animal, by 2000 BC it was being used, along with the wild ass (onager) and ox as a draft animal for carts, ploughs, and chariots. Between 1500 and 1000 BC nomads living in southern Russia and Siberia, ancestors of the Scythians, began breeding horses big enough for men to ride. By the 10th century BC Assyrian armies in the Middle East included cavalry armed with bows, spears, javelins and sometimes equipped with armor. Scythian graves from the 8th century BC include elaborate saddles of wood covered with cloth and leather, metal harness pieces and bridal bits. By the 5th Century BC the Persians’ Nisean horses were big enough to carry a fully armored man and charge at full speed on the battlefield, and the horse would be associated indelibly with mobile warfare for the next 2400 years.