Blažek, Václav. 2019. Toward the question of Yeniseian homeland in perspective of toponymy. 14th Annual Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative-Historical Linguistics. Moscow: RSUH. Quote: The preceding arguments lead to the conclusion that Yeniseians still lived in the steppe region of Central Asia including Kazakhstan in the first centuries of CE and certainly earlier. Northern Kazakhstan, namely the area of the Botai43 culture, was probably the place where the wild horse (Przewalsky-horse, i.e. Equus ferus przevalskii Poljakoff) was already in the mid 4th mill. BCE domesticated (cf. Bökönyi 1994: 116; Becker 1994: 169; Anthony 1994: 194; Outram 2009: 1332-35). The creators of this culture were totally specialized in breeding of horses (133.000 horse bones were found here already in the early 1990s!).The proximity of the Yeniseian *ʔɨʔχ-kuʔs "stallion" and Indo-European *H1ek̂u̯os "(domesticated) horse" is apparent and explainable through borrowing. If the Indo-European term cannot be transparently derived from IE *ōk̂u- "swift" = *HoHk̂u-, while the Yeniseian compound "stallion" = "male-horse" is quite understandable, the vector of borrowing should be oriented from Yeniseian to Indo-European.
