How horses shaped humankind, from inspiring pants to vaccines

Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of The Debaters, the show where Canada's top comedic minds go head to head on topics that might not be top of mind yet. This week we famously ask a pretty rich question. Is it better to be rich or famous? Get ready for a wealth of wit from two of our country's most well-known, if not most well-paid, jokers. Listen to this week's episode of The Debaters wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Someone somewhere more than 5,500 years ago was the first person to ride a horse.

They were probably somewhere in the Eurasian steppe, grasslands that stretched from Bulgaria to Mongolia, and chances are it was a teenage boy. It would have been probably a hunter, and the hunters in this case were male, and I'd like to envision it was some adolescent group of hunters that went out there and this guy's mates were hey I dare you to get on the back of that horse. Some stupid teenager on a dare that decided to literally change the world. And change the world they did, according to historian and author Timothy Weingard.

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