High up in the steppes of Kazakhstan is where it may have first happened: a human decided to climb atop a horse instead of killing it for meat. The act seems trivial today, but nearly 5500 years ago it would have been revolutionary.
"Horse domestication was a landmark moment, a bit like the invention of the wheel," says Alan Outram of the University of Exeter, UK.
By domesticating horses, humans created the first form of land transportation, vastly expanded the region within which goods could be traded and wars waged, and spread culture over huge swathes of land.
Outram and colleagues have now found the world's first "horse farms", in Kasakhstan's ancient Botai settlements. The sites date back to 3500 BC, pushing back the domestication of horses by 1000 years.
The researchers studied horse remains from four settlements in the steppes of north-central Kazakhstan. Before the Botai built villages dug out of the ground, the region was home to nomadic hunter gatherers that followed and killed wild herds of horses. What made them suddenly settle in villages, the largest of which comprises some 100 houses, is something of a mystery.
Read the rest in New Scientist: Riding with the first cowboys – in 3500 BC.
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