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Unit Information Game Strategies History

Cavalry are mounted soldiers riding horses into battle.

It is not known how horses first began to be used for locomotion and riding, but the current consensus so far was that horses may have been domesticated in Central Asia around 3500-3000BCE. Even so, these animals may have been tamed and bred solely for food, not transport. Fossil horse teeth recovered in Kazakhstan show wear patterns consistent with the use of rope or leather bits, proving perhaps that locals had attempted to tether horses for the purposes of riding or transport as early as 3500BCE.

Even so, these first horses were not very large, and thus not powerful with regards to speed or stamina so they could not operate as true cavalry. Rather, they may had been used either on short-distance travel like donkeys, or more likely as draught animals to carry baggage or haul chariotry. It would take centuries of careful breeding and husbandry by humans before horses that were sufficiently large to be ridden could emerge.

Although heavy cavalry tactics would well dominate Europe for three hundred years after the First Crusade, light cavalry continued to be important, especially in areas that were impoverished, highly open, or filled with broken terrain, such as the mountainous south of Spain or the open wastes of Central Asia. The Turks and the Mongols often had the best light cavalry, because of their access to horses and the necessity of light cavalry for operations in the open grassy plains of Asia.

Cavalry dominated battlefields for centuries, but fell out of favor with the invention of firearms. The last major use of cavalry was in World War I, and the last use was by the United States in World War 2, during the defense of the Philippines.

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