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This is the Year of the Fire Horse, according to the Chinese zodiac, which means it’s the perfect time for the 2026 Harding Distinguished Lecture. Archeologist and author William Taylor will present “Horses and the Human Story in South Dakota and the American West: New Perspectives from the Ancient World.”

The lecture is March 26 at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center at South Dakota State University. The two-hour event begins at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Tickets are limited, so

“Much of what we think of as the story of South Dakota was built on horseback,” Taylor said.

Taylor is the author of “Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History” and is an assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Boulder. His work explores human-animal relationships with a focus on horse domestication in the ancient world. 

He is a National Geographic Explorer and has received the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Taylor has roots in the northern Plains, having grown up in Montana and gone to school in Minnesota. He said he’s especially honored to be invited to the lecture series at SDSU.

“It’s one of the more distinguished and storied designations in our part of the world. Look through the folks that have been involved — it’s a very impressive list. It’s humbling and exciting for me to be added to that group of people,” he said.

Taylor leads field projects in Mongolia, the Central Asian steppes, the American Southwest and the Great Plains. He’ll pull from those expeditions to paint the full history of horses during his lecture, with a focus on the local region.

“The Great Plains have been where we’ve made some of our biggest scientific discoveries with the story of the horse,” he said.

It’s where he says the horse lineage first began. Sixty million years ago, the first horse ancestors roamed prehistoric forests. They were about the size of small dogs and walked on three toes. Modern horses first evolved in the cold prairies of North America over the last few million years before they spread around the world.

Early horses first met early humans half a world away in Europe and Asia.

“Horses are actually the most commonly depicted animal in early Paleolithic art,” he said.

The first horse-human relations were very different from what they are now. According to Taylor, horses are among the earliest animals that scientists have found evidence of humans hunting for food.

Taylor’s lecture will cover the early roots of horses, as well as the transition from a prey animal to a cooperative, domestic animal. 

“I view the domestication of horses as kind of a lightning strike across the ancient world in terms of the way it changed our societies,” he said.

To see one of the biggest reasons why, take a look out the car window next time you drive across the state.

These animals thrive in places like grasslands and high deserts, which once separated people and cultures across almost every continent in early history. Horses and horse travel made the plains into cultural, economic and political hotspots. 

“Horses made grasslands the center of the ancient world. The connective tissue there was horses. We see that playing out first in the steppes of Central Asia and Eurasia. As horses made their way into West Africa, as they got carried across the Atlantic into North and South America, the same thing happened,” Taylor said.

His lecture will also cover new research into how horses spread throughout the Great Plains. 

Most of what’s accepted about horse introduction in the area is based on primary documents, like books, notes and journals, usually written in English by Europeans or Americans.

Taylor took another look, basing his research on archaeology, genomic analysis and collaboration with Native partners to pinpoint when domestic horses first reached the Great Plains area. He’ll share what he found during his lecture.

About the Harding Distinguished Lecture Series
The Harding Distinguished Lecture Series was established to honor the memory of Albert S. Harding, an 1892 graduate who taught history and economics at State for 47 years. Harding believed it was important for students to hear great speakers and kept a journal of those he heard, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan and Edward Everett Hale. The tradition continues by bringing to the SDSU campus people of national and international reputation to speak on timely topics.