I’m sure you’ve already guessed, but the inspiration for my posts often comes from events which took place on the day. The first event on the “on this day” website for 1st June is 4000 BC, domestication of horses. They do say it’s a hypothesis only.
The people of the Eurasian Steppes, near Dereivka, managed to tame horses. I guess 4000BC is an estimate, and 1st June is the middle of the year. Dereivka is in central Ukraine. The evidence is from an archaeological dig at the site which discovered the skull and bones of a horse in a domestic setting.
The universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale, all have something interesting to say about the dig. It must have been like the invention of the steam engine. Imagine the mobility that the horse gave us. The period also marked the transition from the copper to the Bronze Age. I wonder if that had anything to do with the domestication of the horse? The mobility must have accelerated contact between peoples. It would have been like a Bronze Age internet. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. It is much harder than the component parts so conferred great advantages in terms of sharpness.
The age of the horse lasted around six thousand years. However the life of my 11th great-uncle, Sir Anthony Standen witnessed many scientific advances. However he had to ride horses and sail boats to get about. When writing my historical fiction series, the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, I try to capture the technological progress of the times. In The Spy who Sank the Armada I chronicled the advance from matchlocks to wheel lock guns, together with rifling.
The electronic calculator was invented in my lifetime, and now we have AI. I could say something about progress, but the struggle of the current Ukrainian people reins me in. Slave Ukraine!