Bob Brussack's List: Central Asia

• It was believed that the oldest evidence of domestication was found at the village of Dereivka in Ukraine, dating to about 2000 BC. But Olsen and some other researchers argued that domestication occurred much earlier among members of the Botai culture on the steppes of what is now northern Kazakhstan.
• She and her colleagues found a variety of evidence suggesting domestication, including a horse corral, the use of horse manure in roofing materials and the widespread use of rawhide tools such as lassos, which are generally associated with horse-dependent cultures.
• The country is flat and dry with vast steppes, or wide-open spaces. It also has extremely cold winters, much too cold for early people to have depended on conventional domestic animals, which must be sheltered and fed in winter.
   
   Horses, in contrast, can survive in the cold and can forage even in snow.
  

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