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The invention of nailed-on horseshoes has been ascribed to the Celts, who are supposed to have been using them already in Roman times. If, however, horseshoes had actually been in use by the Gauls, Celts or Germanic tribes, Julius Caesar would certainly have mentioned them in his book "The Conquest of Gaul". Also, neither in Pompeii or Herculaneum, nor in the ruins of other Roman forts where mounted units were stationed, have horseshoes been found amongst the considerable iron artifacts. And among the remains of 30 fallen military horses in Krefeld-Gellep, there was not a single horseshoe to be found.
The Swiss researcher Walter Drack compared artifacts of supposedly Celtic horseshoes with shoes from precisely datable medieval finds, and observed that the "Celtic" shoes were the same type used in central Europe from the 10th to the 16th Centuries. On this subject Markus Junkelmann writes: "The silence of written and pictoral sources, the topological identity of all discovered 'originals' with mediaeval and early modern pieces, as well as the material improbability that the horseshoe, after it was first invented, should then over centuries be only sporadically used, while at the same time the existing, awkward hoof shoe remained in use, support with virtual certainty that there were neither Celtic nor Roman horseshoes." Nowadays, the working and military horse has become a leisure- and sporting companion who often suffers, through the confined keeping usual in most areas, from extreme lack of movement. Is it not thought-provoking, this assumption that a horse, which is only allowed to move 1 - 4 hours a day--if that--supposedly cannot do without constant shoeing?
With friendly permition by DVM H. Strasser
Copyright 2005 Dr. vet. med. H. Strasser
Ed & Trans. Sabine Kells
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