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New research indicates that humans began using horses over a thousand years earlier than previously thought, with taming efforts occurring independently around 3500 to 3000 BCE.

Scientists from the University of Helsinki utilised DNA, archaeological, and bone records to re-evaluate the timeline of human-horse interaction.

The study suggests that horse taming was a slow, stop-start process across various regions, rather than a singular event leading to full domestication.

Early horsemanship is believed to have facilitated the significant mass migration of the Yamnaya people across Eurasia around 3100 BCE.

This rapid expansion, aided by horses, helped disseminate populations, technologies like the wheel, and potentially the earliest Indo-European languages across the continent.

In full Humans were riding horses 1,000 years earlier than…