Skeletons indicate the origin of the art of horseback riding – 03/13/2023 – Science

Skeletons around 5,000 years old found in eastern Europe could be the first evidence of a practice that revolutionized the ancient world: the art of horseback riding. The skeletons in question, however, are not of horses, but of people who probably rode them, whose bones would have been altered by this habit.

If the analysis of the bone structure of the possible knights is correct, it is one more important piece of the puzzle of the origin of many European and Asian peoples. A series of linguistic, archaeological and genetic clues suggest that the domestication of horses and the use of these animals as mounts was a key element in the expansion of the so-called Proto-Indo-Europeans.

This prehistoric group would have emerged in the Black Sea region, more or less on the current border between Russia and Ukraine, and spread both west and east. Over millennia, their descendants and the peoples they assimilated or influenced gave rise to nearly every group in present-day Europe. This also applies to many important ethnic groups in Asia, especially a good part of the Indians (hence the “indo” in their name) and Iranians.

But it is clear that the use of the horse for transport and warfare was not restricted to the Proto-Indo-Europeans and peoples derived from them. The animal ended up being incorporated for these purposes in almost all the empires of the Old World and, later, also in other continents, being supplanted only with the popularization of trains and automobiles from the second half of the 19th century.

Accurate data on the early stages of horse domestication are somewhat contradictory. Images showing people riding the animals unmistakably appear relatively late, around 2000 BC Well before that, around 3500 BC, horse teeth found in Kazakhstan show signs of wear that could have been caused by reins.

However, the site also has remnants of equine milk consumption. Therefore, it is believed that the initial step in the domestication of animals may have involved their creation as meat and milk animals, and only later as mounts.

In the new research, which has just been published in the specialized journal Science Advances, a team led by Martin Trautmann, from the University of Helsinki, in Finland, analyzed the skeletons of 217 people who died between 6,500 years and 3,500 years ago (a period that mainly covers the Bronze Age).

The bones were found in four countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia). Many of them correspond to individuals from the so-called Yamnaya culture, animal breeders who expanded across much of Eastern and Central Europe and also reached southern Siberia around 3000 BC.

Genomic studies indicate that people linked to the Yamnaya culture contributed to the DNA of many Europeans today, reaching over 50% in some cases, which suggests that they correspond to the Proto-Indo-Europeans of archaeological hypotheses.

And it was precisely in the case of members of this people that Trautmann and his colleagues identified what they called the “rider’s syndrome”, which is not a disease, but a set of changes in the skeleton that seem to be associated with the individual remaining in the saddle. Or maybe, just on the animal’s back, without the saddle —at that time, saddles like those used today, as well as stirrups, were not even dreamed of by the first horsemen.

This means that much greater effort was required from the hips, thighs and the final portion of the spine in order for the person to remain mounted. It was changes to these parts of the skeleton that the team identified in five individuals from the Yamnaya culture who were buried between 3021 BC and 2501 BC in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

For Trautmann, the data reinforce the plausibility of the association between members of this culture and the first Indo-Europeans. “A very mobile lifestyle, based on herding sheep and cows, made them good candidates for this, as well as, of course, the use of horses for transport,” he summarized to the Sheet.

According to the researcher, it is still difficult to know whether, at that stage, horses were also used for war. “But even if they were too fearful or stubborn to face combat directly, using them as ‘battle taxis’ to get your riders to strategically important points quickly would make them invaluable elements in surprise attacks or skirmishes,” he explains. he. “Still, our hypothesis is that the knights of that time were more like cowboys than Napoleon’s cavalry”, jokes Trautmann.