Domestic bliss: Shifting back the date of horse domestication has a significant impact on understanding how early societies developed, say the researchers.
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CHICAGO: Researchers have unearthed evidence that humans domesticated horses and used them for milk, meat and transport at least 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.
A team of archaeologists has found conclusive evidence that the Botai culture of Kazakhstan kept domesticated horses 5,500 years ago.
"What's really key here is they weren't just domesticated," said lead author Alan Outram of the University of Exeter, in southwestern England.
"Full pastoral package"
"By this point they've really got the full pastoral package: they were eating them, they were riding them they were milking them, which suggests that the original domestication is even earlier still," he said.
Shifting back the date of horse domestication has a significant impact on understanding how early societies developed, Outram said. "The domestication of horses is known to have had immense social and economic significance, advancing communications, transport, food production and warfare."
"Having a domesticated animal that could be eaten, milked, ridden, used as a pack animal and potentially for haulage would have had a tremendous impact on any society that initiated or adopted horse herds," added co-author Sandra Olsen, curator of anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, USA.
Fermented mare's milk
Outram's team made the discovery by studying the bones and teeth of horses found in sites east of the Ural Mountains in northern Kazakhstan. By comparing the remains to those of wild horses of the same period, they were able to show that the domesticated horses had been selectively bred and also had "bit damage" as a result of harnessing.
The researchers – who detail their results in the U.S. journal Science today – also used a technique to find residues of horse milk fat in pottery discovered at the site.
Mare's milk is still drunk in Kazakhastan and is usually fermented into a slightly alcoholic drink called koumiss.
The domestication, or
The domestication, or taming, of wild horses was an important accomplishment for the human race. In fact, it altered the course of human history. Taming wild horses have changed the ways we travel, the ways we communicate, and even the ways we fight wars with each other