Cheval

About this book

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large single-toed animal of today, originally in North America. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE in Central Asia, primarily associated with the Botai culture; their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. However, contemporary genetic evidence indicates that modern domesticated breeds do not descend from this lineage, instead pointing to the Western Eurasian steppes in the lower Volga-Don region as the homeland of modern domestic horses