Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7.11
High density of London horse traffic. From the Illustrated
London News, November 16, 1872.
than being hauled by wagons (Utley 1925). Land trans-
port was thus the most ubiquitous energy-limited hin-
drance to the complexification of preindustrial societies;
only railways changed that. But even as railways took
over the intercity traffic, horse-drawn transport reached
an unprecedented, albeit short-lived, intensity in the rap-
idly growing cities of late-nineteenth-century Europe and
North America (fig. 7.11). New affluence brought more
private coaches and cabs; omnibuses, first seen in Lon-
don in 1829; and delivery wagons (Dent 1974). In
1901, at the end of Queen Victoria's reign London had
some 300,000 horses, and some New Yorkers were
thinking about creating a large suburban belt of pastures
to accommodate the swelling numbers of urban horses.
In contrast to slow land transport of goods, many pre-
industrial societies perfected the art of fast horse riding,
which was used in most remarkable ways in efficient net-
works of long-distance communication. Horseback rid-
ing began most likely around 4000
B
.
C
.
E
. among the
people of the Sredni Stog culture in today's Ukraine
(Anthony, Telegin, and Brown 1991). The still inconclu-
sive evidence is based on distinctive fractures and bevel-
ing of premolars of animals that had been bitted. Riding
a horse has always been a physical challenge. Because the
horse's fore-end contains about three-fifths of its body
weight, the only way for the vertical planes intersecting a
rider's and an animal's center of gravity to coincide is for
the rider to sit forward.
But an upright forward position leaves the rider's
center of gravity much higher than that of the horse.
This can produce a rapid lever action by the rider's back
when the horse moves forward,
jumps, or stops fast.
