The bond between horses and humans goes back a long way: the animals have played a central role in our species' expansion around the globe, as well as their long and storied use in warfare – even as recently as the Second World War. It was previously thought that the earliest wild horses were tamed and domesticated was around 4,000 years ago, around 2200 to 2100 BCE, but new research has now pushed our relationship with horses back by over a thousand years. "Horses were being ridden, worked, and traded long before anyone thought it possible," said researchers at the University of Helsinki, writing in the journal Science Advances . The research team used DNA, archaeological and bone records to examine the timeline of human use of horses through the centuries.…