When was the horse tamed

A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America. The earliest evidence for encounters between humans and horses is found at Paleolithic sites in Eurasia. Butchered horse bones indicate that early peoples used horses as an important source of food. But these swift and spirited animals also clearly fired the human imagination in ways other animals did not.

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In China an indigenous silk moth is co-opted for man's purposes. Bombyx mori is still the only insect to have been fully domesticated in the sense that, unlike the bee , it cannot live in the wild and is not known in a wild form. The silk moth has lost the power to fly; its caterpillar can find no mulberry leaves for itself.

The species exists, and survives, only because humans like silk. The earliest known silk from bombyx mori was found in a bamboo basket unearthed by archaeologists in China. Other pieces in the same basket were from wild silkworms. The fragments date from between and BC. As beasts of burden and transport, camels occupy an important place alongside horses and donkeys.

Two small members of the camel family, the llama and the alpaca of south America, are domesticated first - probably before BC. At that time both species appear to have been on the verge of extinction. Domestication by the American Indians saves them. Neither the llama nor the alpaca exists now in the wild. The larger of the two, the llama, is primarily a beast of burden, while the shaggy alpaca is valuable for its wool. Neither animal is strong enough to pull a plough or drag a cart - two important steps in the story of civilization which are denied to the early Americans.

In the parched regions of north Africa and Asia two different species of camel become the most important beasts of burden - the single-humped Arabian camel in north Africa, the Middle East, India and the double-humped Bactrian camel central Asia, Mongolia.

Both are well adapted to desert conditions. Experts think they were used for riding, and as a source of meat and milk. However, these archaeological clues - such as traces of horse milk found in ancient pots from the western Eurasian Steppe - are at odds with evidence from mitochondrial DNA.

These studies suggest domestication happened in many places across Europe and Asia. The new study looked at nuclear DNA samples taken from horses living in eight countries in Europe and Asia.