Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
I did some digging and some asking, and it turns out that the "horse nomad" theory is probably one of those "just so story" explanations, with no empirical basis. For starters, legends of centaurs and similar beings are probably older than widespread use of horses for riding.
Centaurs were originally portrayed as having horse ears, tail and two horse hindlegs. The later version with four horse legs may have been inspired by horse riders, but not necessarily by nomad raiders...