Uncommon
Domestication of the horse
The exact timeline and mechanisms of the domestication of the horse have been subject to significant academic debate. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. Early discoveries in the context of the Botai culture in the Akmola Province of Kazakhstan had strongly suggested that Botai settlements (dated to 3700–3500 BCE) were the location of the earliest domestication, citing evidence such as bit-related tooth wear and horse milking. However, more recent archaeological and genetic evaluations have challenged this timeline. Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz (2021) argue that Botai findings only reflect intensive exploitation of wild horses, possibly involving some level of management, herding, or seasonal capture, but not full domestication in the way we see in later horse-using societies. While earlier studies by Warmuth et al. (2012) pointed to horses having been domesticated around 3000 BCE in what is now Ukraine...
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