Domestication of the Horse

Horse domestication on the Eurasian steppe has been substantially revised by recent ancient-DNA research. The long-cited case for the Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan around 3500 BCE, once treated as the founding domestication event, is now understood by most geneticists to describe a population that did not become the ancestor of the modern domestic horse; genomic work published in the early 2020s instead traces the modern domestic horse' s lineage to a rapid expansion from the lower Volga-Don steppe region around 2200 BCE, spreading across Eurasia within a few centuries. Once domesticated, horses transformed transport, warfare and, for agriculture specifically, ploughing and haulage, reshaping farming economies from the steppe pastoralists who first bred them to the ploughed fields of medieval Europe.