KZBlog

I’m late to the party with this story, as I’m late with every story due to an unanticipated hiatus I was forced to take from blogging. But this is a great story nonetheless. New evidence suggests that horses were first domesticated and milked here in Kazakhstan, about 5, 500 years ago.

This follows on an earlier discovery of an ancient stone corral in northern Kazakhstan dated around 3700-3100BC, as well as horse leather products. However scientists concluded that horse domestication probably started in Russia or Ukraine.

Now they seem to have found horse teeth that show wear that only could have come from a bit, with one tooth dated to 3500 BC. In addition horse skeletons found in North Kazakhstan have slim legs that look more like domesticated horses than wild horses. Finally, they found clay pots that had remains of fat from horse milk and horse meat in them. While it isn’t surprising perhaps that people ate horses, research also suggests that milking came pretty soon after domestication. I believe that no other culture has been known to drink horse milk regularly so it would be fascinating to know why Kazakhs came up with the idea. This also might explain why kumys (fermented mare’s milk) remains such a strong part of Kazakh culture.