Evidence that the Botai domesticated and rode horses

What can horse bones tell us about riding horses? Sandra Olsen has found evidence in Kazakhstan that may point to some of the earliest horse riders. Ninety percent of the animal bones in the Botai dwellings come from horses. That certainly makes horses important to investigate, but my first question is: couldn't people have hunted them for food? Having horse bones doesn't, by itself, show that anyone kept or rode the animals.

The writer acknowledges that difficulty. We can't distinguish wild from domesticated horses just by the shape of their bones. Dogs and sheep are different in that respect. So Olsen needs another way to interpret what she found: compare the horses' sexes and ages at death with the patterns we would expect under different uses. These are mortality patterns—patterns in which animals died and when—not just a count of animals living in a herd.

Start with animals kept for meat or milk. Herders typically kill most males before they mature while retaining the females. Keeping extra males alive would use resources without serving those purposes in the same way. Prehistoric goat remains show this pattern. If the Botai managed horses similarly, we would expect many males to have died young.

But that's not what Olsen finds. Most of the male horses were fully grown, and males slightly outnumbered females. Could these simply be the remains of hunted animals? For many large species, a hunter would favor a big adult male because it provides more meat. That initially looks like a plausible explanation.

The next step changes the comparison. Horses have their own group behavior. A family contains one stallion, several adult females, and young horses; a bachelor pod contains males. When attacked, the family stays together, while the bachelor group scatters. A hunter trying to maximize success would therefore target families. That should leave a smaller proportion of adult males than Olsen actually finds. Knowing the sex of a bone isn't enough; we also need to know how those animals behave when hunted.

Now return to domestication. Why would herders keep so many males alive instead of killing them young, as with goats? Riding supplies a purpose. An extra male goat may just mean another animal to feed, but an extra horse could provide another mount. The difference in use could explain the difference in mortality patterns. That makes riding a plausible explanation; it doesn't turn the sex-and-age counts into direct proof of someone sitting on a horse.

The full skeletons add another kind of evidence. Picture killing a 1,000-pound horse away from the settlement. Why drag the entire carcass, including all those heavy bones, back to the dwellings? A horse already living near people could die there. Alternatively, domesticated horses could supply the power to transport a hunted wild horse. Either possibility gives domestication a role in explaining the whole remains, without requiring every skeleton to come from a domesticated animal.

Finally, some nearly complete skeletons were carefully arranged with human remains. That suggests a relationship more involved than simply killing horses for meat. It doesn't tell us exactly what those people believed or establish that they worshipped horses. It is another clue to the nature of the relationship.

We have followed several pieces of evidence toward the same hypothesis. Ordinary food-herd management and ordinary hunting don't fit the adult-male pattern as well as the proposed riding explanation; whole skeletons and the burial arrangements add support. The writer presents Olsen's account favorably while keeping its strength qualified: these finds may be evidence of domestication and riding, not a conclusive reconstruction of every Botai practice.