Early horse domestication on the Eurasian steppe
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Central Eurasian Steppe (Kazakhstan)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
On the open grasslands of the central Eurasian steppe, the horse — long hunted for meat — began to be managed and kept by people.
The clearest early evidence comes from the Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan, around 3500–3000 BCE, where settlements are dominated by horse bones and yield possible corral structures, concentrations of dung, bit-wear on horse teeth suggesting bridling, and pottery bearing residues of mare's milk. Harnessing the horse for milk, meat, transport and eventually riding gave steppe peoples unprecedented mobility across vast distances, transforming herding, trade and warfare. Ancient DNA, however, has complicated the story: the Botai horses belong to a lineage that did not give rise to today's domestic horses, whose ancestors instead spread explosively from the lower Volga–Don region around 2200 BCE. Horse domestication thus appears to have been a multi-stage, multi-centred process rather than a single event.
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Related science, technology & invention events
- Invention of the wheel and wheeled vehiclesc. 3500 BCE
- Invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamiac. 3500 BCE
- Earliest Egyptian Hieroglyphs at Abydos (Tomb U-j)c. 3250 BCE
- Invention of cuneiform writing at Urukc. 3300–3100 BCE
- Domestication of sorghum and pearl millet in the African Sahelc. 4000–2500 BCE
- Ötzi the Iceman, a Copper Age life preserved in icec. 3300 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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