Editing Domestication of the horse (section)

===Botai culture===
Some of the most intriguing evidence of early domestication comes from the [[Botai culture]], found in northern [[Kazakhstan]]. The Botai culture was a culture of [[Hunter-gatherer|forager]]s who seem to have adopted horseback riding in order to hunt the abundant wild horses of northern Kazakhstan between 3500 and 3000 BCE.<ref name="Olsen2003">{{cite book |title=Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse |last=Olsen |first=Sandra L. |editor=Levine, Marsha |editor2=Renfrew, Colin |editor3=Boyle, Katie |year=2003 |publisher=McDonald Institute |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-1-902937-09-0 |pages=83–104 |chapter=The exploitation of horses at Botai, Kazakhstan }}</ref><ref name="Anthony and Brown 2000" /> Botai sites had no cattle or sheep bones; the only domesticated animals, in addition to horses, were dogs. Botai settlements in this period contained between 50 and 150 pit houses. Garbage deposits contained tens to hundreds of thousands of discarded animal bones, 65% to 99% of which had come from horses. Also, there has been evidence found of horse milking at these sites, with horse milk fats soaked into pottery shards dating to 3500 BCE.<ref name="Outram"/> Earlier hunter-gatherers who lived in the same region had not hunted wild horses with such success, and lived for millennia in smaller, more shifting settlements, often containing less than 200 wild animal bones.

Entire herds of horses were slaughtered by the Botai hunters, apparently in hunting drives. The adoption of horseback riding might explain the emergence of specialised horse-hunting techniques and larger, more permanent settlements. Domesticated horses could have been adopted from neighboring herding societies in the steppes west of the Ural Mountains, where the [[Khvalynsk culture]] had herds of cattle and sheep, and perhaps had domesticated horses, as early as 4800 BCE.<ref name="Anthony and Brown 2000"/>

Other researchers have argued that all of the Botai horses were wild, and that the horse-hunters of Botai hunted wild horses on foot. As evidence, they note that zoologists have found no skeletal changes in the Botai horses that indicate domestication. Moreover, because they were hunted for food, the majority of the horse remains found in Botai-culture settlements indeed probably were wild. On the other hand, any domesticated riding horses were probably the same size as their wild cousins and cannot now be distinguished by bone measurements.<ref name="Benecke and von den Dreisch 2003"/> They also note that the age structure of the horses slaughtered at Botai represents a natural demographic profile for hunted animals, not the pattern expected if they were domesticated and selected for slaughter.<ref name="Levine1999" /> However, these arguments were published before a Copper Age corral was discovered at Krasnyi Yar in 2006 and mats of horse-dung at two other Botai sites.<ref name="Biello">{{cite news |last1=Biello |first1=David |title=Horsemen of the Steppes: Ancient Corrals Found in Kazakhstan |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/horsemen-of-the-steppes-a/ |access-date=18 May 2022 |work=Scientific American |date=October 27, 2006 |language=en}}</ref> Current findings continue to support the Botai as having domesticated horses.<ref name=Outram2023>{{cite journal| doi=10.3389/fearc.2023.1134068| doi-access=free| title=Horse domestication as a multi-centered, multi-stage process: Botai and the role of specialised Eneolithic horse pastoralism in the development of human-equine relationships| date=2023| last1=Outram| first1=Alan K.| journal=Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology| volume=2| hdl=10871/133044| hdl-access=free}}</ref>

A study in 2018 revealed that the Botai horses did not contribute significantly to the genetics of modern domesticated horses, and that therefore a subsequent and separate domestication event must have been responsible for the modern domestic horse. Genetic evidence also connects Botai horses with [[Przewalski's horse]] in Mongolia, which has led to debates over whether Przewalski's horses should be considered a never-domesticated population or feral descendants of domesticated Botai horses.<ref name="Dance"/><ref name="Librado">{{cite journal |last1=Librado |first1=Pablo |last2=Khan |first2=Naveed |last3=Fages |first3=Antoine |last4=Kusliy |first4=Mariya A. |last5=Suchan |first5=Tomasz |last6=Tonasso-Calvière |first6=Laure |last7=Schiavinato |first7=Stéphanie |last8=Alioglu |first8=Duha |last9=Fromentier |first9=Aurore |last10=Perdereau |first10=Aude |last11=Aury |first11=Jean-Marc |last12=Gaunitz |first12=Charleen |last13=Chauvey |first13=Lorelei |last14=Seguin-Orlando |first14=Andaine |last15=Der Sarkissian |first15=Clio |last16=Southon |first16=John |last17=Shapiro |first17=Beth |last18=Tishkin |first18=Alexey A. |last19=Kovalev |first19=Alexey A. |last20=Alquraishi |first20=Saleh |last21=Alfarhan |first21=Ahmed H. |last22=Al-Rasheid |first22=Khaled A. 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