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In contrast, wild horse bones regularly exceeded 40% of the identified animal bones in Mesolithic and Neolithic camps in the Eurasian steppes, west of the Ural Mountains. [51] [53] [54] Horse bones were rare or absent in Neolithic and Chalcolithic kitchen garbage in western Turkey, Mesopotamia, most of Iran, South and Central Asia, and much of ...
Extinct equids restored to scale. Left to right: Mesohippus, Neohipparion, Eohippus, Equus scotti and Hypohippus. Wild horses have been known since prehistory from central Asia to Europe, with domestic horses and other equids being distributed more widely in the Old World, but no horses or equids of any type were found in the New World when European explorers reached the Americas.
[153] [154] [155] However the horses domesticated at the Botai culture in Kazakhstan were Przewalski's horses and not the ancestors of modern horses. [ 156 ] [ 157 ] By 3000 BCE, the horse was completely domesticated and by 2000 BCE there was a sharp increase in the number of horse bones found in human settlements in northwestern Europe ...
The history of horse domestication has been subject to much debate, with various competing hypotheses over time about how domestication of the horse occurred. The main point of contention was whether the domestication of the horse occurred once in a single domestication event, or that the horse was domesticated independently multiple times.
Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under a saddle or in a harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 ...
The presence of domesticated horses in the steppe cultures was an important clue for Marija Gimbutas's development of her Kurgan hypothesis. [30] According to Anthony, horseback riding may have appeared as early as 4200 BCE, [ 31 ] and horse artifacts show up in greater amounts after 3500 BCE. [ 31 ]
Although there is an apparent absence of horse remains between 7000 BC and 3500 BC, there is evidence that wild horses remained in Britain after it became an island separate from Europe by about 5,500 BC. Pre-domestication wild horse bones have been found in Neolithic tombs of the Severn-Cotswold type, dating from around 3500 BC. [16]
The population of the Botai culture has been connected to the earliest evidence for horse husbandry. Enormous amounts of horse bones were found in and around the Botai settlements, along with corral-like enclosures and large amounts of horse dung, suggesting that the Botai people kept horses or even domesticated them.