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An equine alliance
人类与马的结盟
How the horse has moulded empires, wars and human affairs.
马如何塑造了帝国、战争和人类事务。
The Horse. By Timothy Winegard.
《马》，蒂莫西·瓦恩加德著。
Hoof Beats. By William Taylor.
《马蹄阵阵》，威廉·泰勒著。
Raiders, Rulers and Traders. By David Chaffetz.
《劫掠者，统治者，贸易者》，大卫·查菲茨。
There was nearly a world without horses.
曾经世界上差一点没有马。
At the end of the last ice age warming temperatures turned the grasslands where horses roamed into swamps and forests.
在最后一个冰河时代末期，气温升高，将马漫步的草原变成了沼泽和森林。
Humans hunted them heavily for meat.
人类曾为了获得肉而大量猎杀马。
Wild horses did, in fact, go extinct in North America around 7,600-12,000 years ago.
事实上，在大约7600到12000年前，北美地区的野马确实灭绝了。
You could say that by stopping hunting and starting to domesticate and harness them, humans saved horses.
你可以说，通过停止捕猎、开始驯化和驾驭马，人类拯救了它们。
Or you could say that horses decided to bet on people.
或者你可以说，马决定把自己的命运赌在人类身上。
Humans were forever changed by their equine alliance.
人类因与马结盟而永远改变了。
Able to gallop at more than 40mph (64kph) and to convey heavy objects, horses altered the arc of empires and determined victors and losers in battle.
马能够以超过40英里/小时（64公里/小时）的速度疾驰，也能运送重物，从而改变了帝国的发展弧线，并决定了战斗中谁胜谁败。
Timothy Winegard, a historian, calls horses “humanity’s longest-serving weapon system”.
历史学家蒂莫西·瓦恩加德将马称为“为人类服役时间最长的武器系统”。
They also transformed the way people could hunt, communicate, trade and even dress.
马还改变了人们狩猎、交流、贸易甚至着装的方式。
Trousers spread only after horses were domesticated, as an innovation for riding.
裤子是在马被驯化之后才开始流行的，是为了骑马而发明的。
The oldest surviving pairs, dating to 1300 BC, belonged to horsemen.
现存最古老的几条裤子可追溯到公元前1300年，属于某些骑手。
A herd of new books has come out looking at the horse’s impact on human history, though their approaches are very different.
最近出版了几本新书，阐述了马对人类历史的影响，尽管这几本书的论述方法大不相同。
David Chaffetz, a scholar of Asian history, focuses his deeply researched, elegantly written “Raiders, Rulers and Traders” on the interplay between horse-borne nomads and settled peoples, a defining aspect of Chinese, Indian and Persian civilisations.
亚洲历史学者大卫·查菲茨在其研究深入、文笔优雅的《劫掠者，统治者，贸易者》中，聚焦于骑马的游牧民族与定居民族之间的互动，这是定义了中国、印度和波斯文明的一个方面。
He argues that “What we now call the Silk Road should more accurately be called the Horse Road, for it was the horse, and not silk, that drew buyers and sellers together…to form the first large-scale international trading routes.”
他认为，“我们现在所说的丝绸之路应该更准确地称为马之路，因为是马而不是丝绸，将买家和卖家聚集在一起……从而形成了第一条大规模的国际贸易路线。”
The broadest and most accessible view comes from Mr Winegard.
最广泛和最容易理解的观点来自于瓦恩加德。
Ranging from horse anatomy to the role of horses in both world wars, his book is packed with fascinating detail.
从马的解剖结构到两次世界大战中马的作用，他的书充满了引人入胜的细节。
For example, by weight, Britain shipped more horse feed than ammunition to the western front in the first world war; 20 years later Hitler enlisted some 2.7m horses in the second.
例如，按重量计算，在第一次世界大战期间，英国运往西边战线的马饲料比弹药还多；20年后，希特勒在第二次世界大战中征用了约270万匹马。
In contrast, “Hoof Beats” by William Taylor, an academic and curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, is based primarily on archaeology; unfortunately it reads like a competent textbook.
相比之下，由科罗拉多大学自然历史博物馆的学者兼馆长威廉·泰勒所著的《马蹄阵阵》主要基于考古学，不幸的是，它读起来像是一本还算可以的教材。
