It is not entirely clear how, when or where the domestication of the horse took place. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BCE, these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. The clearest evidence of early use of the horse as a means of transport is from chariot burials dated c. 2000 BCE. However, an increasing amount of evidence began to support the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes in approximately 3500 BCE.Discoveries in the context of the Botai culture had suggested that Botai settlements in the Akmola Province of Kazakhstan are the location of the earliest domestication of the horse. However, Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz (2021) argue that Botai findings only reflect intensive exploitation of wild horses—possibly involving some level of management, herding, or seasonal capture—but not full domestication in the way we see in later horse-using societies. Warmuth et al. (2012) pointed to horses having been domesticated around 3000 BCE in what is now Ukraine and Western Kazakhstan. The evidence is disputed by archaeozoologist Williams T. Taylor, who argues that domestication did not take place until around 2000 BCE.
Genetic evidence indicates that domestication of the modern horse's ancestors likely occurred in an area known as the Volga–Don, in the Pontic–Caspian steppe region of eastern Europe, around 2200 BCE. From there, use of horses spread across Eurasia for transportation, agricultural work, and warfare. Scientists have linked the successful spread of domesticated horses to observed genetic changes. They speculate that stronger backs (GSDMC gene) and increased docility (ZFPM1 gene) may have made horses more suitable for riding.
