Elias Manuel Morgado Pinheiro Dissertação de Mestrado em ...

However, it was after c.3800BC that the spread of domestication became truly
apparent. Large-scale domestication and horse-centred economy can be found in Botai
culture sites northern Kazakhstan, c.3700BC 68 . After c.3500BC, horse remains begin to
surface outside the steppe, in the Upper Danube Valley, Central and Western Europe,
North Caucasus, Transcaucasia and Western Anatolia, thus providing unequivocal
evidence for its domestication 69 . This raises a question: if horses were first domesticated
c.4800BC, why only after 3800BC did the practice spread? Horses are strong and
temperamental creatures, which makes them unlikely candidates for domestication. That
is the most likely reason why it was domesticated long after cattle or sheep. That is also
why, after it had been domesticated, the practice took so long to become widespread.
However, unlike other domestic species, horses are extremely well-adapted to cold
climates. Unlike sheep or cattle, horses are able break ice in order to drink, and to pierce
ice-crusted snow with their hooves, in order to reach the winter forage beneath it. That
meant that horses were much easier to feed during winter times. That might have been
the initial reason for domesticating horses: access to an optimum source of food during
winter time. This might have been the reason behind the increase of horse domestication
after c.3800 BC.
Between 4200 and 4100BC, climate began to change, leading to lower annual
temperatures and severe winters, especially between 3960 and 3821 BC. This has led to
the adoption by agricultural societies in the Danube region of more cold-tolerant vegetal
species 70 . Considering that the climate change affected the entire northern hemisphere,
there is no reason to assume that similar practices were not adopted outside the Danube
area. To the pastoralist steppe societies, that meant a shift to a more cold-tolerant animal
species, namely, the horse. That can easily explain the rapid expansion of horse
domestication after c.3800 BC.
The adoption of the horse as a meat source by an increasing number of
populations, leads to significant breakthroughs in domestication, culminating in a fully
horse-centred economy in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan, after c.3800 BC. The
Botai sites revealed the oldest known evidence of large-scale horse domestication.
Represented by four settlements, Botai, Krasnyi Yar, Vasilkovka and Roshchinskoe,
68 Olsen, 2008, p.257
69 Anthony and Brown, 2007
70 Bailey, 2002
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