were found at Gohar Tappeh, Iran, giving rise to claims that today's Caspian originates from the oldest known breed of the domestic horse.

[4] Indeed, the oldest known specimen of a Caspian-like horse was found in 2011, in a cemetery dating back to 3400 B.C.E., in the archaeological dig at Gohar Tappeh in the province of Mazandaran in northern Iran, between the cities of Neka and Behshahr.

That these horses were very small by modern standards is shown by a miniature golden chariot, a toy or perhaps a votive offering, found in the so-called Oxus Treasure,[6] discovered in the extreme east of the empire but apparently made in central Persia.

[5]: 148 The Caspian Horse is extremely hardy, with strong hooves that rarely need shoeing unless they are consistently worked on very hard or stony ground.

[4] Research has shown that Caspian and Turkoman horses occupy positions in phylogenetic analysis that has given rise to a hypothesis that they carry genetics that are ancestral to all other oriental type breeds studied to date.