Soil from a Copper Age site in northern Kazakhstan has yielded new evidence for domesticated horses up to 5,600 years ago. The discovery, consisting of phosphorus-enriched soils inside what appear to be the remains of horse corrals beside pit houses, matches what would be expected from Earth once enriched by horse manure. The Krasnyi Yar site was inhabited by people of the Botai culture of the Eurasian Steppe, who relied heavily on horses for food, tools, and transport.
     "There's very little direct evidence of horse domestication," says Sandra Olsen, an archaeologist and horse domestication researcher at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. That's because 5,600 years ago there were no saddles or metal bits to leave behind. Equipment like bridles, leads, and hobbles would have been made from thongs of horse hide, and would have rotted away long ago. Likewise horses themselves have not changed much physically as a result of domestication, unlike dogs or cattle. So ancient horse bones don't easily reveal the secrets of domestication.
     Olsen's team looked for circumstantial evidence that people were keeping horses. So, they surveyed the Krasnyi Yar site with instruments to map out subtle electrical and magnetic irregularities in the soils. With this they were able to identify the locations of 54 pit houses and dozens of post moulds where vertical posts once stood. Some of the post moulds were arranged circularly, as would be most practical for a corral. Next, geologist Michael Rosenmeier from the University of Pittsburgh collected soil samples from inside the fenced area and outside the settlement. The samples were analyzed by Rosemary Capo, University of Pittsburgh geochemist, and her students. Modern horse manure is rich in phosphorous and is more likely to be preserved in the soils for millennia. As it turned out, the soil from inside the alleged corral had up to ten times the phosphorus concentration as the soils from outside the settlement. Lots of phosphorus can also indicate a hearth, said Capo, but that phosphorus is usually accompanied by a lot of potassium, which is not the case in the corral at Krasnyi Yar. The corral soils also had low nitrogen concentrations, says Capo, reducing the likelihood that the phosphorus came from more recent manure.
     Early as the Botai were, they were probably not the first to domesticate horses, says Olsen. "The very first horse domestication was probably a bit earlier in Ukraine or western Russia," she said. "Then some horse-herders migrated east to Kazakhstan." Horses allowed the Botai to build large perennial villages with, in one case, hundreds of homes. They did so without the benefit of agriculture, Olsen explained, as theirs was a horse economy. The Botai were able to stay put year-round because horses are very well adapted to cold winters, she said. "Horses can survive ice storms and don't need heated barns or winter fodder," Olsen said.
     Later people of the same region adopted shepherding and cattle raising, said Olsen. That created a more nomadic culture, since sheep and cattle are not well suited for sub-zero climates and therefore needed to be taken south in winter. The tradeoff, she says, was that cows and sheep give far fattier milk year round, which can be made into yogurt and cheese. Sheep also provide wool. Kazakh people today still eat horsemeat. They were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle during the Soviet era and have returned to small village pastoralism, Olsen says.

Sources: EurekAlert! (23 October 2006), The Horse.com (25 October 2006)