Right. You would have thought nomadic people would have used horses long, long before agriculture and settling into cities were a thing.

That's what I was thinking too. The Pyramids date back 5000 years ago or so. I'd imagine humans well figured out how to ride a horse before building the pyramids.

I mean, the Pyramids are so ancient by the time Caesar went to Egypt the Pyramids were already considered ancient.

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Anybody else find it weird that we keep those animals locked up so we can sit on their backs from time to time? And even make them compete in tournaments and such? Like, I'm not a PETA activist or anything, but the whole thing just seems weird to me when taking a step back.

In modern Manhattan, only 20% of households own a private vehicle.

The choices people make about their transportation has very little to do with individual preferences, and instead very much to do with how cities build their infrastructure to incentivize certain modes of transit.

In reality, there are very, very few people that are driving enthusiasts, or train enthusiastsor cycling enthusiasts.

Most people, and by most, I mean like 95%+ people will just use whatever mode is the best combination of fastest, most convenient, cheapest, and safest, usually in that order of importance.

Unfortunately in the US, in most places, private cars beat public transit or walking in the first two categories every time, so much so that the last two categories are barely even a consideration.

It’s interesting that in the new world they had massive civilizations in central and southern Americas without any domesticated riding animals (just lamas and alpacas as load bearers).

This just encourages cost escalation and pushes the nuclear family further and further from mainstream. Nuclear family is absolutely essential for the responsible growth and sustainment of a superpower country, and forcing bicycle use is telling people they really can't have a family, or they can't work where the good jobs are, or they can't live where they can have a family because there isn't enough bedrooms or house space, and no one with a baby wants to commute hours to the daycare in a bicycle then to work. There literally isn't enough time for a busy family to fart around with making bicycles a viable primary transportation source while still being forced to have two incomes and keeping all the family tasks done. In the unique pockets where you can walk to many places, like New York, very expensive to live. Can't reasonably buy property. Bicycles are really not a viable option for most people.

Do historians think that chariots came before bareback riding?

Surely a chariot requires loads of design and infrastructure while riding requires a relationship and thats it?

Taxis are more efficient than cars generally. Drivers try to maximize their earning time, so they don’t usually spend a whole lot of time driving between rides. They’ll pick someone up from the airport, drive them to town, then drive someone from town back to the airport. It’s rare they’ll go to the airport, pick someone up, then drive them to town and then go back to the airport looking for another fare.

The main reason private cars are so damn inefficient isn’t only because you’re moving 4000 lbs of steel glass and plastic for a single person, but also because you’re spending a shitload of energy producing those 4000 lbs a for something that spends 95% of its useful life sitting in a driveway or parking garage. Things that don’t get used are wasteful by definition.

No, but whereas you may have had multiple cars being brought into any one area from people going shopping etc, it's possible a single Uber may shuttle multiple people into one area over time.

Probably matters more for places where you have a lot of traffic from outside the city into the city being replaced by ubers/taxis than driving around within the city, and it's far eclipsed by the efficiency of actual public transportation of course.

Yes, if you have that setting turned on and are in a market in which Uberpool is present.

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At the end another academic cautions that whole they were probably riding horses, they could have been riding other animals and specifically mentions mules.

Mules are the offspring of a female horse and a male ass or donkey. So not only would horses already have to be domesticated to breed mules, they would also have to have access to donkeys - which they did not in the area surveyed during the time period being discussed. I don't see how it could be any other animal but a horse.

Edit: Had the sexes of the equines backwards

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Cara on the road == cars on existence.

Cars on the road are cars that are driven at that point in time. Not parked cars

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So you would have to reduce the production of follistatin to reduce the chemo resistance?

Very late? Ancient Egypt as a kingdom formed right around this time.

www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/11/27/parking-dominates-our-cities-but-do-we-really-see-it

8 is the upper end of the estimate. Of course they're not actually reserved. But the US has parking minimums that require a parking spot per area of a business (ratio depends on type of business). Many businesses will threaten to tow your car if you park there and aren't a customer (as with everything, enforcement varies). So in essence they are reserved. Most workplaces have employee lots with enough parking for all their employees to drive alone. In rural areas, this is a reasonable assumption. In urban areas, it is not. (Well, actually most urban areas in the US still have a driving mode share of 90% or higher, so it is a reasonable assumption, but it really shouldn't be, given how inefficient cars are.)

Service needs to be there first. If you cannot reasonably get where you want to go, when you want to be there, then cost isn't a consideration at all. If you have good transit (good means both frequent and coverage) we can talk about other considerations. There are very few places where making transit cheaper will attract more riders than investing in more/better service.

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The major problem is still access. I live in one of the many large areas of my state where most people commute to the big city, but the only practical way to get there is to drive. There is no subway service and the nearest commuter trains are about a half hour away. Most people would rather drive an hour and a half each way than drive a half hour and then hope there is still any parking left to pay for at the closest train station, wait for a train, and then take that in, and do the reverse home. Trains can be late and sometimes they're overfull and you have to wait a long time for the next one. You don't really save any time taking the train, and it is often longer. The only advantage is being able to sit and read instead of driving, but that assumes the seats aren't already full. Having a slightly shorter commute and knowing you can leave when you want to instead of having to hope the train schedule works out for you is also a big advantage of driving. To make mass transit a more realistic option for more people, we need a much bigger investment in rail service. More lines extending to more parts of the state with more regular and reliable service. Without that, people are still going to drive.

I can’t imagine the thought process that led to a human jumping on top of a wild animal and trying to ride it. Alcohol must have been involved.

Well we see when horses did come around the culture that first domesticated them basically took over most of the damn world. Like a proto-mongol empire, the yavanna people swept over much of Asia and all of Europe and took over the leadership roles in the civilizations they conquered. That's why Indo European languages and customs are so absurdly wide spread