Dr. William T. Taylor is an Assistant Professor and Curator of Archaeology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, whose work explores the domestication of the horse and the ancient relationships between people and animals. In his new book Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History, he explores how four dynamic pulses (hoof ‘beats’) in the story of humans and horses – their initial domestication, the invention of horse transport, the explosive shift to mounted riding, and their dispersal into the New World – transformed ancient societies and created the world we live in today.