Now and then you stumble across history when you least expect it.

Yesterday my friend Nancy and I visited Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.   Sometimes you visit a museum because there’s an exhibit you want to see.  Other times you visit a museum because you want to hang out, talk, laugh a little .  If you see something wonderful along the way, it’s a bonus.   Yesterday was the second kind of museum visit.  We had a choice between whales and horses.  We chose The Horse

It was history nerd paradise.   There was an evocative thought at every stop, from the evolution of horses in North America to modern therapeutic riding.

Here are some of the highlights, filtered through my own historical preoccupations:

•  One of the recurring themes in the kind of history that I read is hordes of armed horsemen riding out of Central Asia:  Scythian, Mongols, Timurids, Turks.  Turns out there’s a good reason for that.  Zooarcheologists* believe that the horse was first domesticated in what is now Kazakhstan.

•  Pants, as opposed to say togas, kilts, or monastic robes, were first developed for riding horses.  One more piece of civilization brought to you courtesy of Central Asia.

•  The Pony Express only lasted eighteen months before the telegraph put it out of business.  Evidently it doesn’t take long to become a cultural icon.

The exhibit will be on display at the Field Museum through August 14.  If you’re in Chicago, or are looking for a reason to visit, trot on over.

If you miss the exhibit in Chicago, you have another chance. The Horse will be at the San Diego Natural History Museum from June 1, 2012 through January 20, 2013.

*Zooarchaeologists (also known as archaeozoologists depending on your point of view) study animal remains located in archaeological sites.   These people do some amazing things.  For instance, they use fossilized horse teeth to tell them not only what ancient horses ate, but also what the environment was like in North American 55 million years ago.