In ancient times, horses lived in huge herds in the wild. It is easy to guess that then no one shoed them. A logical question arises: why did people begin to shoe horses after taming them, if in the wild a useful animal does well without metal shoes? Let's try to understand this issue.
People tamed the horse a very long time ago, around the 7th-6th millennium BC. But people learned how to shoe horses relatively recently. To date, archeology tells us unequivocally that horseshoeing began somewhere in the 4th-3rd centuries BC. Moreover, the first horseshoes were very different from what modern people are used to seeing. At first, horseshoes were made of leather, wood and fabric. The metal horseshoe is an even later invention. Systematically, horses and cattle began to be shod in the Roman Empire. The Roman horseshoe was called "hipposandalia".
The first horseshoes, including Roman ones, were attached to a horse's hoof without nails. Horseshoes on ukhnals (nails) appeared already in the Middle Ages and became a real breakthrough, since all previous horseshoes, worn as shoes, often led to the development of skin diseases in animals. However, why do we need a horseshoe, if in nature the horse does without it? There are exactly two reasons for this: load and surface.
In 10 out of 10 cases, a horse tamed by man is used for a particular job, subjected to constant stress. Carrying a creature with two lower limbs on oneself is also work not provided for by evolution. A person weighs a little relative to the horse itself, but already quite enough for her hooves to begin to wear out faster. When the horse performs even more difficult work, the wear of the hooves accelerates. In order to prevent this from happening, a horseshoe is needed.
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As for the surfaces, in the wild, horses, as a rule, lived where they had to ride on soft grassy soil. As the "urban civilization" developed, horses increasingly began to move on hard surfaces, which also significantly accelerate the rate of hoof wear. A dirt road is already quite enough to grind off the hooves of an animal. In this regard, the horseshoe also performs a protective function.
It is important to understand that accelerated hoof wear is fraught with the fact that the horse will earn a leg injury. In this case, the animal refuses to step on a sore leg or does it extremely reluctantly. It becomes impossible to ride or work on such a horse. In addition, there are special varieties of therapeutic orthopedic horseshoes for the treatment of diseases and injuries.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about what it is Yakut horse: how this breed can live at -70 degrees.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/211121/61335/