Dereivka and the problem of horse domestication

Abstract

The domestication of the horse was revolutionary in its consequences – as much so as the spread of agriculture, trade, warfare, metalwork and the other more usual subjects addressed by archaeologists studying post-Neolithic human development. For not only did it directly cause important changes in peoples' relationships to the world around them by the mobility it conferred, but also it was deeply implicated in all those other developments. In spite of that, in the past 15 years very little has been done to extend our knowledge of the subject. This study, if anything, shows that we probably know even less about the earliest domestication of the horse than we thought