[junior44660]

> Such data show us that important cultural developments in the fourth millennium B.C.E.—including the Yamnaya migration and the dissemination of kurgans and Indo-­European culture—probably took place many centuries before the first horses were domesticated

I can't find the citations to this in the article.

The tone of the article seems like this author has a particular schtick with the Yamnaya and / or the Indo Europeans. A lot of academia and journalists do this so not surprised.

[rbetts]

Here's a paper by the author on the topic:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355443578_The_origi...

[cmrdporcupine]

Reading the abstract is a lot more pleasant than the article, which rambles.

Sounds like the author is supporting a theory that horse-riding spread along with Indo-Iranian languages (Sintashta culture) rather than earlier. Which doesn't seem crazy to me.

Horses were definitely livestock for a long time before that, kept for meat and dairy. They were very useful on the steppe because unlike cattle (which were imported from elsewhere), they can dig through snow to forage.