Oldest Known Horse Farm Discovered
18. Mar, 2009 
11 Comments
I am a Science Friday freak. I imagine that Ira Flatow is my friend, filling me in on all the cool things I want to know about.
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Researchers have identified what they say is the earliest known example of the domestic raising of horses. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers describe tracing the origins of horse domestication back to the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan, some 5,500 years ago. The researchers found evidence that horses were harnessed or bridled, and also that the horses were milked at the farm, in the steppe zones to the east of the Ural Mountains in Northern Kazakhstan.
A Botai stallion’s lower second premolar (mesial edge), displaying a clear parallel-sided band of bit wear that penetrates through the cementum and enamel. This morphology and depth of wear occur only in bridled animals. Image courtesy of Science/AAAS.
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that’s nuts!
Sarah
Isn’t it amazing? I wonder if Pita Kelekna will be including this in her book.
I had to milk a horse for awhile, when the foal was ill. It worked very well.
Wow. Interesting! I’m an NPR freak and Ira Flatow fan myself. I wonder how they can tell the mares were milked, and begs the question what happened to the foals??
This is fascinating. Isn’t it curious that horses may have first been domesticated in a country that is now a backwater, yet the energy that developed our cultures was first harnessed (if you will pardon the pun) there.
I was once asked to milk a mare (this being in Transylvania) by a lady whose baby was sick. Mare’s milk was supposed by the peasants to be good in some such circumstances.
very cool! i suspect horses were domesticated and ridden even earlier, but it is great to have such concrete evidence…
Lori
Hats off to you for skill and, well, bravery! It’s amazing what we can do when we need to. How did it turn out with the foal?
I guess, with science, it’s one thing at a time.
Don’t you just love Ira?
They evaluated the bowls found in the settlements and discovered they had contained mares milk in them. So the milk had been stored … hence taken from the mares.
hah! pun.
I think mare’s milk is comparatively high in fat–maybe it is good for those needing extra nutrition, like goat’s milk. I’d try it. Ask Lori and see if she tasted it. Might be good!
jme
one step at a time, I guess. it really is cool to have evidence–maybe they’ll find something older soon.