In Episode 1, we go back 45 million years to meet a tiny, forest roaming creature that led to all horses today. We also visit some of the fastest, and most valuable, horses on Earth, and learn how elastic energy and a bizarre ability to breath-hold make horses some of the fastest land-runners in nature.
The domestication of the horse has been a mystery of science for generations. In Episode 2 of Equus, First Riders, anthropologist turned filmmaker Niobe Thompson travels to Kazakhstan to witness the groundbreaking discovery of a skeleton from the earliest culture ever to tame horses. In this episode, viewers get a set of genuine science scoops: we are the first to learn that our ancestors domesticated the horse twice and that early riders carried the world’s first pandemic of plague to Europe.
In Episode 3 of Equus: The Story of the Horse, anthropologist turned filmmaker Niobe Thompson introduces viewers to some of the most fascinating and unlikely of the world’s 400 horse breeds. He meets the Yakutian, at home in the coldest inhabited place on Earth (Siberia). He meets the Arab, a spirited horse at home on the scorching sands of the Arabian Desert. And he encounters the most valuable horses on Earth: elite Thoroughbreds, a breed of super-specialized sprinters descended from one of three 18th-century stallions.