Overview
- Researchers in Science Advances combined ancient DNA, archaeology, and bone studies to map three horse groups across western Siberia to Central Europe.
- Evidence shows people in several regions were taming and riding horses around 3500 to 3000 BCE, moving the start of horse use back by about a millennium.
- Only the group called DOM2 became fully domesticated around 2200 to 2100 BCE, then spread across Eurasia and into the Middle East to found today’s domestic lines.
- Shortly before 3000 BCE, Yamnaya herders were already riding DOM2 horses and taking them west, helping seed the later expansion.
- The team links early riding and wagons to faster migrations and possibly the first Indo-European languages, which they present as a reasoned interpretation.