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virishking t1_jb5gmi0 wrote

You can’t necessarily make that comparison since you’re dealing with different groups of people. This study indicates the Yamnaya- a pastoralist people of the Pontic-Caspian steppe- were riding horses several hundred years before the great pyramid was built in Egypt. It’s also important to note that horse domestication =/= horse riding. Even this article notes evidence of horse domestication that predates this. Meat, milk, pack animals, chariots, these things all likely predate horse riding given that wild horses didn’t have backs strong enough for it. Horse riding likely would’ve come along after generations of domestic horse breeding for those purposes.

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tossawaybb t1_jb6mel0 wrote

Yep. The big thing is food availability. Large horse breeds can't subsist purely off grass, there just aren't enough calories in there. Supplementing with grain, however, works quite well. Even without intentional selective breeding, domestication improved their food prospects enough to enable larger and larger horses

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