| We've recently gone over a number of ancient societies, |
| and looked at how they tamed animals like chickens or cows for food and other resources. |
| Today we'll be focusing on the Botai people. |
| The Botai people lived in central Asia, |
| what is now northern Kazakhstan, over 5000 years ago. |
| Everything we know about this ancient culture comes from three rich archaeological digs. |
| Unlike many western cultures at the time, |
| the Botai people were not nomadic, |
| but they didn't tend to farms or agriculture like many other sedentary peoples. |
| They built villages with hundreds of homes, |
| and we have a lot of evidence that they domesticated horses to aid them in their daily lives. |
| This would make sense, |
| because horses were native to the area, |
| and could withstand the rough climate. |
| Without a need for heated barns or terribly rich food, |
| the Botai people could rely on these horses for clothing, food, and transportation. |
| This also allowed them to settle, instead of being nomadic. |
| Were the Botai people the first ones to domesticate a horse? |
| No, horses had been domesticated a bit earlier, |
| and historians believe it was to the northeast, further into Russia, |
| where the first domesticated horses originated. |
| However, it's quite feasible that those people migrated southeast into what is now Kazakhstan, |
| either forming these Botai people or passing on their methods. |
| Couldn't the horse have just been hunted and killed? |
| How do we know the bones mean the horses were domesticated? |
| Like most history, there's no real way to be 100% certain. |
| However, we can deduce from the tools around the encampment, |
| that they kept some sort of large livestock. |
| We also found writing indicating that they drank milk. |
| Where would they get milk, if not from domesticated animals? |
| How would you milk a wild horse? |
| They'd probably kick you and run away. |
| The fact that we found horse bones in the encampment, and not other types of livestock, |
| suggests strongly that they had been domesticating the animals for years. |
| Unlike dogs, horses do not show signs of domestication very strongly. |
| Physically, at least. |
| Ancient horse bones themselves won't tell us much about domestication, |
| they won't have changed significantly enough from modern horse bone structure. |
| We have found, however, structures in the Botai villages that strongly resemble corrals or pens. |
| Not long ago, scientists took soil samples |
| and concluded that the earth inside those pens |
| had phosphorus concentrations ten times higher than the baseline. |
| What this means, is that large numbers of horses were being held in those pens. |
| Horse manure, you see, has high concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen. |
| Nitrogen, being an unstable element, can easily wash away or decompose into the soil. |
| Phosphorus is a bit harder to get rid of, so it builds up in the soil |
| and leaves easily detectable traces as it fuses with the calcium and iron in the soil. |
| Since the Botai settlement soil has loads of Phosphorus in it, |
| we can conclude they had herbivorous livestock of some sort. |
| Double it up with the bones, and you have some pretty solid proof of horse domestication. |
| Later on, the Botai people became nomadic again, as they started herding sheep and cattle. |
| Those two species don't do well in cold environments, |
| so the Botai people had to travel southward during cold winters, |
| to make sure their livestock survived. |
| The kind of food and supplies that they gained by the hard work of travel was worth it, in their eyes. |