14 DAY TRIAL // New scientific research pushes back the date of the first recorded human uses of horses more than 1,000 years. University of Exeter scientist Alan Outram and his team have found in Kazakhstan evidences that the native Botai culture had been using horses as beasts of burden and sources of milk and food for at least 5,500 years, which helps historians shed new light on the culture and the development of these early societies in the area. According to the team, this is the oldest known use of domesticated horses in history. The finding has been reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
In the evolution of mankind, the domestication of the horse, which is believed to have been widespread by around 3,000 BC, brought with it numerous advancements in our societies, including breakthroughs in transport and communications. Messages were no longer carried by running men, but by mounted messengers, which could get the job done faster and more safely. Also, the domestication of equines had a major impact on the way wars were carried out, and led to the appearance of cavalry as the elite unit in all armies of the time.
“This is significant because it changes our understanding of how these early societies developed,” Outram explained. He added that the Botai culture used the animals as a source of food, for milk and meat, as well as for heavy labor, carrying all types of materials from one place to another. He emphasized that horses in the region might have been domesticated independently from larger such centers in the world, like those in China and the Near East.
Historically speaking, they were domesticated very late in human evolution, as compared to sheep and goats, as well as dogs. Canines have been around us for the better part of 15,000 years, and have evolved for companionship in the meantime, losing some of their more aggressive feats. Some species even gained larger brains, in order to be able to understand simple commands and comply to them.
“For the first time the Eurasian steppes, formerly a hostile ecological barrier to humans, became a corridor of communication across Eurasia linking China to Europe and the Near East. Riding also forever changed warfare. Boundaries were changed, new trading partners were acquired, new alliances became possible, and resources that had been beyond reach became reachable,” Hartwick College anthropologist David W. Anthony, who was not part of the new research, concluded.