Fit for Fighting

AT ITS HEIGHT IN THE seventh century B.C., the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire extended from Egypt through the Levant and Mesopotamia to the northern reaches of Anatolia and into Asia Minor. To control this domain, the Neo-Assyrians relied on highly skilled and deadly efficient military forces. They equipped their army with siege weapons, such as catapults and battering rams, and introduced innovative forms of cavalry warfare, including the use of battle chariots. Neo-Assyrian kings demanded surrender, fealty, and tribute, and depicted their conquests in vivid carvings that lined the walls of palaces and public monuments. Warriors traversed the empire’s enormous territory on horses, which scholars believe were first domesticated on the Eurasian steppe around 3500 b.c. and arrived in the Assyrian heartland of Iraq and Syria some 1,500 years later.

The Neo-Assyrians were far from the only ancient people in Asia to develop a culture strongly associated with horses. More than 2,000 miles away from the farthest eastern reaches of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (883–609 B.C.), a group of nomadic pastoralists called the Cheshi, who lived in the Turfan Basin region in what is now northwest China, were also