No, that's not my argument and you keep mentioning zebras when we have just established the difference between a zebra, a horse and a donkey. There is a difference of intelligence. To advocate that this is what was used and regarded enough to breed when other similar creatures were around is to acknowledge that they knew the difference. To know the difference means they are more than capable of considering and attempting to put someone on top of a horse, baring anything else. If you imported those creatures then the people before realised this and so on.

The size of the horse (unless it's massively smaller) is irrelevant, children were sent to work not so long ago.

You're are caught on your argument rather than considering the argument against it. People are people.

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Maybe so, but seeking solutions in the direction of being supportive of humanity rather than restriction and deprivation, are the solutions we need.

The problem was the horses were naturally smaller than the ones we artificially breed later.

So unless you happen to be in a place where horses are naturally big, you would look like a total idiot going around on a struggling pony that will have a broken back very soon.

Still totally possible there was an area where horses could grew stronger due to climate and people did profit of it way earlier. I mean, if 5000 years ago was possible, maybe it happen even earlier than 5000 year ago if there were big horses not man-breeded.

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Dogs are the first domesticated animal.

What's been lacking is pictures. Apparently the Yamnaya did not paint their riding activities in caves so it could be preserved for millennia.

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You're simply ignoring that horses leave skeletons when they die and we can measure those skeletons. We know when they could be ridden and when they couldn't. They needed to be bred for riding; engineering an animal to grow by 40% isn't simple and takes a long time. You're just making false equivalencies to other technologies based on nothing but conjecture.

And by your own logic that people should've decided to develop horse riding much earlier, then people in sub Saharan Africa should've been riding around on Zebras. They weren't "prioritizing horses" because horses are not a native species. They were brought into sub Saharan Africa relatively recently, so why didn't people ride Zebras when there were no horses present, a period that lasted tens of thousands of years? By your logic, it should've happened. And if zebras are perceived more like donkies, then that also applies to early horses, which mentioned earlier. A zebra and early horses are about the same size, so the conditions are about equal.

I mean, dredging for seaweed can cause the PH of the ocean to change and that can be worse.

Or just feed the cattle seaweed.

Weren’t ancient humans also smaller though? Or was it not proportionate enough to make a difference?

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We're talking about a civilisation that made gigantic structures in an unknown way, that as best as we can sumise used pulleys to move extremely heavy items. You don't think animals would be involved in that in some way, you don't don't think that someone at something in those thousands of years would wonder about about riding them? People ride elephants that can crush them in seconds, they keep monkeys that could rip their faces off as pets. Enki is oftern depicted with a tame lion. In a traditional hunter gatherer sense you would want to understand animal behaviour. As we've discussed, this carries on to other things. It's difficult to imagine going that far with an animal such as a horse but ignoring something like riding it when it has been drawn on so many times throughout history. Everything is always improved on, but it always starts with the basics. It's very rare to overlook the fundamentals of these advancements because they have even around so long. Horses were and are used for many things.

The zebra part is interesting but again it plays into the view that these people knew what they were doing. Zebras are perceived as more equal to donkeys. As such, it's likely that in times past people realised this and so prioritised horses.

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No, it doesn't stand to reason. You have to domesticate them first; and remember that a horse can easily kill a man, even a small one. This means you need to have a good reason to devote resources to doing that, you need to already have the other technologies that go alongside animal husbandry, and you need to be in the right place at the right time to even be around horses.

Technological advancements don't happen just because, and cultural change isn't some linear path that everyone on earth is going down the same way; if it were, people in sub Saharan Africa would've domesticated Zebras a long time ago and done the same thing as people in Eurasia did with horses, but they didn't; it clearly wasn't worth doing for them.

This is why we need to switch to a different food source or have global rations of the food supply.

Similar fun fact, the bow has been used for thousands of years for hunting and war, but the far more efficient compound bow was invented after the nuke.

We have had hunches that it might have been earlier, but with this we have scientific evdence to show for.

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