THE steppes of Kazakhstan may be where a human first decided to climb onto a horse, creating the earliest form of land transport.
“Horse domestication was a landmark, a bit like the invention of the wheel,” says Alan Outram of the University of Exeter in the UK.
Outram and colleagues found “horse farms” in Kazakhstan’s Botai settlements, dated to 3500 BC, pushing back the domestication of horses by 1000 years.
The team studied bones from four settlements. More than 90 per cent were horse bones, and wear on the animals’ teeth shows that they wore bits and bridles.
The…
