Popular Science

Scientists are trying to figure out where the heck horses came from

A new study shows how little we know about their origins.

horse in sunset

Super mysterious.

Infomastern/Flickr, CC BY-SA

There’s still a lot we don’t know about how, and where, horses were first domesticated. Experts long thought that all modern horses were probably descended from a group of animals that belonged to the Botai culture, which flourished in Kazakhstan around 5,500 years ago.

But now, published in suggests that the Botai horses were not the ancestors of our modern equine companions—and challenges what we

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