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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.