Horses Have Been Helping People for Over 5 000 Years

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TUVGAN JERDİN AYRİLGAN KİYİN EKEN KERUEN

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sourced by Barbara McPherson

New evidence coming from Kazakhstan leads to the conclusion that the Botai culture in Northern Kazakhstan had domesticated horses for milking.  Less conclusive is evidence that the horses were ridden as well.

" Humans rode and milked horses as early as 3500 BC, say an international group of researchers. The findings come from ancient settlements in Kazakhstan, where horse jawbones showed signs of bridling and ceramic cooking vessels contained traces of horse milk. Researchers also found that the horses' leg bones resembled those of domestic rather than wild horses."Nature 

The Botai culture was distinct from the early settlements in Mesopotamia.  The Botai were hunter gatherers while the Fertile Crescent people had developed agriculture before domesticating animals, although the early nomadic people of Siberia left evidence in the form of saddles and sledges, of reindeer domestication.  

For a few years after the invention of the internal combustion engine it was predicted that horses were obsolete and would be left to become extinct.  It seems the pundits were wrong, horses have been human's companions for thousands of years and it looks like the relationship is alive and thriving.