The resulting book, written by the period’s most imminent equine naturalist, was a masterpiece of Equus erudition. An English soldier turned scientist, Charles Hamilton Smith was concerned that the public was being misled by erroneous accounts or the absence of accurate information. To rectify this error, he set about enabling equestrian essentials to emerge from obscurity, thereby authoring a book which became the principal authority on all aspects of horse-related wisdom. Smith consulted, translated and transcribed every type of original texts, including works in Greek, Latin, Arabic and many Oriental sources. Nor was any topic off limits. Rare legal records detailing Welsh laws against horse abuse were unearthed. An early genetic examination of curly haired horses in Columbia was presented. Eyewitnesses were interviewed who had seen wild sultan-stallions attacking predators in Central Asia.

Yet the mounted author’s most astonishing accomplishment was the careful documentation of more than a hundred ancient and extinct breeds, including the Katschenstzi of Tartary, a shining black horse with a white mane and the Sardinian wild horse, an indigenous animal not imported by man.

In the early days of the 20^th century, the world was agog to learn that a German stallion named Clever Hans could apparently communicate with humans. The discovery of this remarkable animal, who could supposedly also spell and tell time, caused such an uproar that the German government appointed the “Hans Commission” to investigate the astonishing claims. With the New York Times and other papers anxiously awaiting the outcome, the Commission concluded in September, 1904 that no tricks were involved. A sceptical psychologist however declared that the horse’s owner was guilty of inadvertently signalling the answers to Hans.

The result was an impassioned debate, one which resulted in a wealthy German businessman named Karl Krall announcing he had trained three other horses which were smarter than Hans. These horses could not only solve complex mathematical calculations and recognise people, he said, they could also transmit the correct answer to questions via the newly-invented telephone. Plus, to offset scientific critics, one of Krall’s horses was blind!

In the midst of this equestrian scientific brawl, the Nobel Laureate, Maurice Maeterlinck, announced he was going to travel from his Belgian home and personally inspect these educated German horses. Having been granted complete freedom to test the horses in a variety of ways, he concluded, “You rub your eyes and ask yourself in the presence of what new creature you stand. You look for some trace, obvious or subtle, of the mystery. You feel yourself attacked in your innermost citadel where you held yourself impregnable.”

Was it all a colossal fraud? The psychologists, who have spent a hundred years denouncing Clever Hans and Karl Krall’s horses, are still quick to say it was. Yet even their denunciation wasn’t originally unanimous. In a detailed report, Edmund Sanford, one of America’s founding psychologists, reluctantly admitted that he could not conclusively denounce the horses’ scholastic abilities.

With the outbreak of the First World War it all became a moot point, as the horses were slain and the majority of the original documents were lost to posterity. This is the first modern attempt to re-examine the mystery of Clever Hans and his fellow educated horses. This ground-breaking study includes Maeterlinck’s original eye-witness observations, extracts from Karl Krall’s rare German book explaining how he trained the horses to achieve such remarkable results, and Sanford’s detailed psychological report. The mystery of Clever Hans and Krall’s horses still intrigues equestrian scholars and this analysis will provide vital information designed to reconsider the startling question – can horses communicate with humans?

This fascinating and amply illustrated book charts the history of mounted archery from its ancient roots on the steppes of Eurasia thousands of years ago to its current resurgence in popularity in the Americas. It also provides the reader with up-to-the-minute practical information gleaned from a unique team of the world’s leading experts.

Mounted archery is shooting the bow and arrow from horseback at the canter and after a century and a half of neglect on the Great Plains of North America, interest in this thrilling activity is rapidly spreading from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of Capricorn.

This is the story of the reappearance of this exciting discipline in the Americas.

Horseback archery has its origins in two of the great grasslands of the world—the United States Great Plains, and the vast steppes of Eurasia. As far back as 3,000 years ago Asian mounted warriors thundered down on their enemies in lightning surprise attacks, loosing showers of arrows which stunned and hopelessly dissembled their pedestrian opposition.

The horseback archery culture of the American Indians reached a similar level of development and sophistication, but emerged much later and was a shorter phenomenon. Horses spread north from the Spanish colony of Mexico through the Plains beginning in the mid 1600’s, but this dynamic equestrian culture virtually vanished with the demise of the buffalo in the mid 1800’s.

While the average history book is full of dates and events, or battles and inventions, such books are generally penned by pedestrians who lack the equestrian insight necessary to accurately comprehend, study and comment on the impact Central Asian mounted culture had on the development of European society. Yet this remarkable book combines the academic excellence of two of the 20^th century’s leading equestrian experts. The result is the astonishing They Rode Into Europe.

It was written by the famed Hungarian horseman and author, Miklos Jankovich. The author, who had access to records in the Magyar language beyond the reach of most Western European researchers, used a vast array of little-known historical information to create a coherent, comprehensive and authoritative picture of the relationship between mounted cultures from the earliest times to the late twentieth century.

The translator, Anthony Dent, was rightly considered to be one of England’s finest equestrian scholars. This very well-known writer on horses supplemented the amply illustrated text with his own interpolations (marked as such) in those passages which have a special bearing on Britain and North America.

Together, Jankovich and Dent created an equestrian study of unparalleled importance. The history of the world was shaped to a large extent by men on horseback who, because of the animals under them, were able to travel great distances, thus bringing about that exchange of ideas and inventions which is a fundamental requisite of human progress.

Thanks to the work of these two equestrian academic pioneers, the result of their research in the fields of history, ethnology, archaeology and the study of the horse, is once again available in a readable work which explains how horses played a central role in man’s cultural, social, and economic development.