I have a pet theory about how greek mythology talks about wisdom originating from centaurs who lived in the forests of the "east" rhymes pretty well with mongolian horse cultures, where full time riders being percieved half-man and half-horse barbarians is a pretty plausible metaphorical description. These centaurs would have brought sophisticated techniques for domestication, and even the necessary cultural morals and ethics that were the effect of their competence - and which cultivated willingness in the animals, and the stewardship of them. The myth of greek titans raised with the wisdom of centaurs is appealing, and what we understand as hellenic western values that originate from those myths may have been the necessary conseqeuence of our species relationship to horses. The link above talks about the Mongolian connection.
This is more hypothesis generation than explanatory, but horses live shorter lives than humans, we would have left dead ones behind over the course of our migrations. Maybe it could inspire something to test for in the genetic record. The documentary gets into prehistoric ancestors of them, so there are definitely serious people working on this academically.
(second episode here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7xsqy0)
I have a pet theory about how greek mythology talks about wisdom originating from centaurs who lived in the forests of the "east" rhymes pretty well with mongolian horse cultures, where full time riders being percieved half-man and half-horse barbarians is a pretty plausible metaphorical description. These centaurs would have brought sophisticated techniques for domestication, and even the necessary cultural morals and ethics that were the effect of their competence - and which cultivated willingness in the animals, and the stewardship of them. The myth of greek titans raised with the wisdom of centaurs is appealing, and what we understand as hellenic western values that originate from those myths may have been the necessary conseqeuence of our species relationship to horses. The link above talks about the Mongolian connection.
This is more hypothesis generation than explanatory, but horses live shorter lives than humans, we would have left dead ones behind over the course of our migrations. Maybe it could inspire something to test for in the genetic record. The documentary gets into prehistoric ancestors of them, so there are definitely serious people working on this academically.