That's the opposite point to what the other comment was saying.

>Horses are broken in.

Yes but this might apply only to species that are already domesticated.

As for the rest: That makes sense, but you have to look at evidence as well, like an article that's linked in op: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19265018/

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Horses are broken in. Before agricultural practices were adopted, hunters would push animals into corners or ditches. Dogs were domesticated by hunters. I don't see why horses would've taken too much longer. Plants, animals and the elements were the only things they had to occupy their time.

What does that have to do with this?

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Mayan and Aztec pyramids where build without horses too.

>just no way to prove it.

There you go

Domestication of a species probably requires some breeding. You can't just catch one and sit on it.

Mayan temples are build without horses.

> Imagine just having to walk everywhere with all your shit all the time having no way to convently carry any thing you manage to accumulate except for the muscles on your back.

People had wagons long before they figured out how to ride horses. Pack animals, too.

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I doubt it. We have a mountain of evidence, including archeological, anatomical, written and oral traditions saying that we started riding horses somewhere between 3000 and 2000 years ago, and we have this suggesting it was 5000 years ago. We have bones of horses showing that 3000 years ago they were too small to support an adult human rider, we have paintings and descriptions from 3000 years ago showing horses being smaller (e.g. from Egypt), be we have oral traditions saying humans used to ride chariots dragged by a pair of horses (e.g. from Homer), etc. All the "horse riders" would be risking death, simply because horses were too small, the weight of rider would break the horses back and throw the rider down and kill or injure him (and injury was death).

Before the introduction of stirrups you would have a lot less stability. It would make it alot more dangerous and harder to ride. It also limits the activities you can do with the horse. I wonder if this contributed to that earlier attitude towards riding?

Precisely. Very well-put.

If folks were riding horses all through the Bronze Age, one suspects that this would have left at least some trace in the written record.

But no.

Not a single text from that era describes horse-riding as something “normal,” at home or abroad, among the rich or among the poor. It’s always wild, crazy, dangerous, comical, irresponsible or absurd.

I’ll add one more example.

In the fifth book of the Odyssey, at one point Odysseus survives a shipwreck by straddling a plank of wood. As he is helplessly thrown hither and thither by the waves, he is compared to a man on horseback. Now think about that. The image only makes sense if, to Homer and his contemporaries, a rider on horseback was in no way, shape or form in control of the situation. The animal, much like the raging ocean, was seen as a wild, headstrong, violent thing, heeding no command and obeying no orders. Think rodeo, not cavalry. That stuff came later.

Horse jumper for sure /s

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Damn, a thousand years after the advent of civilization, and 250,000 years after the emergence of behaviorally modern man.

Imagine just having to walk everywhere with all your shit all the time having no way to convienly carry any thing you manage to accumulate except for the muscles on your back.

The extreme poverty of life of pre-horse steppe wanderers must've been immemse.

I wonder what it must've been like for somewhere like China to see the vast ocean of haggardly feckless wretches always ambling around at your peripheries go from absolutely pitiable non-factors too suddenly start showing up to battles with the ancient version of nukes that completely fuck you up and topple your civilization every couple generations.

I wonder if this had something to do with the anatomy of the horses back then. Apparently horses in antiquity were much smaller than their current size, which would definitely make it harder and slightly more ridiculous riding one (the image of a fat man on a donkey comes to mind). Also, I am guessing the back of a horse and its neck had to undergo some structural changes to be able to support giving long term rides without suffering any lasting damages. You can already see how quickly their neck stance changes when they go feral.

All of which strongly supports the idea of Proto-Indo-Europeans engaging in chariot-driving, but none of which supports the idea of Proto-Indo-Europeans riding on horseback.

Göbekli Tepe is 12,000 years old. Science knows what it knows but it doesn't know everything and the consensus about very old things is frequently wrong.

Yes but as a stunt, as a joke or on a dare, to impress his buddies or the local girls. Think rodeo, not cavalry. "Good riding" - where the rider is actually in control of the animal - seems to have appeared rather late.

And no one can talk to a horse of course

There were definitely horses in America. They died out around 10k years ago but were reintroduced by the Spanish in the 1400s.