Horse Necklace in 925 Silver and Natural Stone

The earliest form of domestication of the horse dates back to the dawn of time: the initial contact with prehistoric hunter-gatherers, for whom the horse was as simple a prey as any other. Needless to say, things changed in a short time; when man realized he was dealing with an animal that, if trained, could become docile enough to be ridden, the story was never the same.

The first breeders were able to take advantage not only of his physical strength or his agility, but also of a strong and unexpected emotional bond that until then only the "wolf-dogs" had managed to give. On the other hand, the horse immediately demonstrated that it could be useful to man even in the most disparate activities, from hunting to war, from breeding to agriculture, soon becoming man's companion and guardian, both at work and in battle.

At this point, it is not difficult to understand how for ancient men the horse necessarily had to contain divine connotations: a typically shamanic animal, the horse immediately became a messenger of the afterlife, an auxiliary and ecstatic spirit with which to undertake mystical journeys and it is not strange that in classical Roman culture it was always a horse that pulled the "chariot of heaven" led by Apollo, Mithra or the prophet Elijah.

The first historical peoples to introduce their use in a consistent manner were the Indo-European Hittites, who imported them from Eurasia up to Mesopotamia. Following this, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians started the first "crossbreeding" with particular care, in search of new species with more useful characteristics for specific cases: thus it was that the horse soon became different from what it had once been. , wild, free and actually much smaller.

Centuries of selection created new species with strength and speed, increasingly majestic, intelligent and yet docile to commands.

Far from playing the role of mere work tools, increasingly "pure" horses became the protagonists of a particular symbiotic relationship with man, marked by fidelity and dedication, both in daily activities and in the most dangerous war enterprises. It was precisely the war use that brought the value of the horse and its social consideration to its peak also among the Greeks and Romans, as the numerous epic and artistic works clearly demonstrate and in this sense the Homeric legend of the Trojan Horse speaks for itself.

And so the noble animal, accompanying the deeds of its rider like a protective spirit, ended up immortalized in the art of all ancient peoples: engraved on bas-reliefs, sculpted in marble and cast in bronze, painted on the walls and on the pottery.

In warrior culture, both barbaric and classical, the horse is one with its rider, because he is also the architect of the latter's victories, as well as his daily battle partner. This close and continuous phenomenon of anthropization soon led to the recognition of the horse, as well as other animals, as vices and virtues of men. The Greek Artemidorus, who lived in the second century AD, wrote in his Oneirocritica that dreaming of " mounting a racehorse that obeys the reins and the rider well " was a favorable omen of a future union in marriage with a woman.

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