Not entirely, "the evidence suggests" is still the method. These researchers are making educated guesses based on the evidence they've found. I'm simply doing the same. For example, what's the chance that the researchers in the article found the very first horse to ever be bridled or ridden? The likelihood is that they found early evidence, but certainly not the earliest. The odds of that happening would be near non-existent. We have cave paintings of horses from 25,000 years ago, and we have cave paintings of animals from 80,000 years ago. Humans really haven't evolved much in that time. It's easy to underestimate primitive people, we do it all the time.