[5][6][5][7][8][9][10][11] It was once thought that most of the horses in evidence were probably the wild species, Equus ferus, hunted with bows, arrows, and spears.

However, evidence reported in 2009 for pottery containing mare's milk and of horse bones with telltale signs of being bred after domestication have demonstrated a much stronger case for the Botai culture as a major user of domestic horses by about 3,500 BC, close to 1,000 years earlier than the previous scientific consensus.

[12] However, more recent studies analysing dental calculus suggest an absence of dairy product consumption among Botai culture individuals.

Being unable to see in dim light is a significant disadvantage in the wild on the steppes, so it is unlikely that leopard-spotted horses would survive to establish themselves in a population unless they were protected by people who valued them.

[19] Václav Blažek reviewed an earlier proposal by Tamaz Gamkrelidze, who argued that the Botai people spoke a form of Yeniseian languages.

According to him, linguistic data lends some support for a homeland of Yeniseian within the Central Asian Steppe, prior to its migration into Siberia.

[23][11] The Botai and the WSHG can be modeled as deriving ancestry primarily from an EHG-like and ANE-like source, with some gene flow from an AEA-like population.

This model can be simplified into modeling the Botai and the WSHG to derive their ancestry from the combination of an EHG-like population and a population similar to the early Tarim mummies from Xinjiang (Tarim_EMBA1), who had the "fitting" combination of Ancient North Eurasian and Ancient East Asian components.

Different models estimated the overall Eastern Asian-related contributions for the Botai to be c. 17.0±2.2% (12—30%), with the remainder being associated with EHG and ANE-like components.

[26] Botai 14, dated to 3517–3108 cal BC, carried a derived allele at R1b1a1-M478, the lineage which currently occurs almost exclusively in non-Europeans and reaches the highest frequencies in Central Asia and Siberia, in particular in populations surrounding the Altai region.