we all laugh at horse girl andy but she is genuinely nearly a thousand years older than the the earliest archaeological evidence of domestication (in the botai culture in kazakhstan in 3500 BCE) because she is at least 6,500 years old and tracing back to the botai and other kazakhstani sites, it would leave 1,000+ year gap. she definitely had a formative hand in the domestication of the horse especially as a nomadic steppe individual. she also likely would have come from a sredny stog (circa. 4,500 to 3,500 BCE), dnieper-donets (circa. 4-5th millennium BCE) or khvalynsk cultures (circa. 5,000 to 3,500 BCE), to be realistic, as they are found to be europoid (and thus most likely to be close to what we would consider the same facial features and skin tone as Charlize Theron).
however, the sredny-stog culture has the earliest archaeological evidence of phase 2 (around 4,000 to 3,500 BCE) of horse domestication in the form of cheek pieces but no explicit horse riding at this time. it’s possible she grew up with horses as mainly for use to transport foods but there’s also the possibility she could have been some of the first people to actually ride a horse. who’s to say! but i do know she’s the OG horse girl and writing he as such isn’t far fetched because quite a lot of steppe and nomadic cultures were heavily involved in horses in the rituals and their cultures, to the point that they had explicitly horse based names, as seen with a lot of Greek names.
TL;DR: write andy with horse experience she has nearly 6,000 years of it and her life would have been revolving around horses for a very, very long time.
absolutely no one is interested BUT some interesting reads on the peoples of the eurasian steppe and europe in regards to horses and their domestication for those of you who might be:
Anthony, D.W. & Brown, D.R. 2000, “Eneolithic horse exploitation in the Eurasian steppes: diet, ritual and riding”, Antiquity, vol. 74, no. 283, pp. 75.
Anthony, D.W. & Brown, D.R. 1991, “The origins of horseback riding”, Antiquity, vol. 65, no. 246, pp. 22.
Olsen, Sandra L & Zeder, Melinda A, 2019. Early Horse Domestication On The Eurasian Steppe. In Documenting Domestication. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 245–270.
Bendrey, R. 2012, “From Wild Horses to Domestic Horses: a European Perspective”, World Archaeology, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 135–157.
Niles, J.D. 2016, “Hawks, Horses, and Huns: The Impact of Peoples of the Steppe on the Folk Cultures of Northern Europe”, Western Folklore, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 133-164.
here’s a cool artwork of a Scythian horse recreation so i can tie it all back to andromache the scythian who is too old to be a scythian and wont say it
look how cool that is!
Somebody is interested. Please enjoy this collection of historic horses of Eurasian steppe cultures: