The rise and fall of the horse, how it relates to gold and a question

The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

Good Sunday afternoon to you,

I was blown away by the response to Wednesday’s article about weight loss. The Twitter/X summary got more than 10 million views. Here it is, in case you missed it.

Going forward, I am thinking of writing more alternative health stuff, as there seems to be a huge appetite for it. But today it’s business as usual: gold.

And I have a question for you …

The Great Steppe stretches approximately 5,000 miles from the Pacific coast of China through Mongolia, Siberia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania, reaching the Danube Delta and Hungary.

Vast stretches of grassland, savanna, and shrubland—harsh and dry, devoid of trees and large vegetation—are sandwiched between forests to the north and mountains and deserts to the south. This region has connected Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and South Asia since the Paleolithic Age, serving as a predecessor to the Silk Road and the Eurasian land bridge.

This ocean of grass is one of the world’s largest ecosystems. Many remarkable species—elk, gazelle, brown bear, leopard, and tiger—have made it their home. So have many great nomadic empires—the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Mongols, the Huns, and the Göktürk Khaganate—all famous for their ferocity, horsemanship, and military might.

The open space gives rise to mighty extremes of weather—howling winds, unbearable heat by day, and freezing cold by night. Humans could only survive by breeding creatures—goats, sheep, camels, and cattle—even hardier than themselves. Of all of these, perhaps the most essential to human survival and evolution was the horse.

The horse was first domesticated on the Steppe about 6,000 years ago, probably by the Botai people in present-day Kazakhstan. Their horses—likely similar to today’s Mongolian horse—were small, stocky, and hardy, able to travel long distances in trying conditions. The horse enabled tribes to guide their flocks over large distances as they searched for new grazing lands. It facilitated trade and exchange, and allowed them to form huge and terrifying armies.

The fearsome Scythians were the first to use horses in battle, carrying stones, clubs, and bows as weapons. These marauding armies inspired fear. Their warriors were such brilliant horsemen that it seemed they and their horses were one creature, giving rise to the Greek myth of the centaur: wild, untamed, and violent; strong, fast, and ferocious; drunken, lawless, and lustful, with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse.

The Greeks had a complicated relationship with the Scythians, both admiring and fearing them. Chiron, one of the centaurs famous for his wisdom and knowledge of medicine, tutored many of the greatest Greek heroes, including Hercules, Achilles, and Jason. Perhaps the Greeks exaggerated their barbarity to contrast it with their own sophistication and culture.

In any case, while the centaur has endured in myth, it was not long before it was realized that man and beast were not one, and the practice of horse-riding spread beyond the Great Steppe. The horse became the primary mode of land transport for thousands of years.

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Then the Industrial Revolution came along.

The first steam locomotive was developed in England in 1804. By the mid-19th century, railroads had become the primary mode of transportation for people and goods across much of the world. It was the beginning of the end for horses as a primary mode of transportation.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the automobile emerged. “Horseless carriages,” they were called. Karl Benz developed the first gasoline-powered car in 1885. By the early 1900s, cars had become a common sight on many roads, further diminishing the need for horses.

Inventor Alexander Winton sought investment for his Winton Motor Carriage Company. “Get a horse!” a banker told him. “You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.”

Winton continues:

“From my pocket, I took a clipping from the New York World of November 17, 1895, and asked him to read it. He brushed it aside. I insisted. It was an interview with Thomas A. Edison: ‘Talking of horseless carriages suggests to my mind that the horse is doomed… Ten years from now you will be able to buy a horseless vehicle for what you would pay today for a wagon and a pair of horses. The money spent in the keep of the horses will be saved and the danger to life will be much reduced.’”

The banker threw back the clipping and snorted, “Another inventor talking.”

Today, the horse is, for the most part, an expensive luxury. Its use is often just symbolic.

How does this relate to gold

Here is my question:

Could you say the same about gold?

The horse was transport for 6,000 years. It was transport for almost as long as gold was official money. It was “natural transport.”

But just as transport changes as technology evolves, so does money.

Perhaps gold is to money as the horse is to transport?

Something to ponder this Sunday afternoon.

(SPOILER: I don’t think it is!)

Tell your friends about this amazing article.

As from later this week I will be at the Edinburgh Fringe, performing Shaping the Earth, a “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining. I’m then taking the show to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.

Plus:

Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial.

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