Half a million years ago or more, early human ancestors hunted horses with wooden spears— the first weapons – and used their bones to make the first tools. In the Late Paleolithic era, as early as 30,000 or more years ago, ancient artists chose wild horses as their muse: horses are the most commonly depicted animal in Eurasian cave art.
After domestication, horses became the grasslands of Inner Asia based on the life of shepherdsand such important technological achievements like a carriage, saddle and saddlebags made horses the primary means of human transportation for travel, communication, agriculture, and warfare throughout much of the ancient world. These animals eventually reached the shores of all major continents, even Antarctica for a short time.
Horses have transformed ecology, social structures, and economies on a scale never seen before. Ultimately, only industrial mechanization supplanted their almost universal role in society.
Because horses have been so influential in shaping our shared human history, figuring out when, why, and how they were domesticated is an important step toward understanding the world we live in today.
This proved surprisingly difficult to do. Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History, a new book by William Taylor, assistant professor and curator of archeology at the University of Boulder in the US, presents new archaeological evidence that changes what scientists thought they knew about history.
Horse domestication hypothesis
Over the years, almost every time and place on Earth has been proposed as a possible starting point for horse domestication, from Europe tens of thousands of years ago to places like Saudi Arabia, Anatolia (Turkey), China, or even the Americas.
However, perhaps the most dominant model of horse domestication is the Indo-European hypothesis, also known as the Kurgan hypothesis. She suggests that sometime in the fourth millennium BC or earlier, the inhabitants of the West Asian and Black Sea steppes, known as the Pit Grave Culture, built large barrows called kurgans and rode horses. It is believed that the newfound mobility of these first horsemen helped fuel the great transcontinental migrations that spread the languages and cultures of the Indo-European ancestors across Eurasia.
But what is the actual evidence to support the Kurgan hypothesis of the first domestication of horses? Much of the most important evidence comes from the bones and teeth of ancient animals, using what is known as archaeozoology. Over the past 20 years, archaeozoological evidence seems to have coincided with the idea that horses were first domesticated in the Botai culture areas of Kazakhstan, where scientists in the 4th millennium BC. Many horse bones have been found in sites dated to us.
Other compelling circumstantial evidence began to accumulate. Archaeologists have found evidence of what looks like fence post pits, which may have been part of ancient enclosures. They are too found ceramic fragments with remains of mare’s milk – which, according to isotopic measurements, appear to have been used during the summer months, when milk could be collected from domestic horses.
However, there was scientific evidence of the early domestication of horses teeth and jaws of some Botai horses. Like the teeth of many modern and ancient riding horses, the teeth of the Botai horses looked dull from chewing.
All these data clearly indicated that the horse was domesticated in northern Kazakhstan around 3500 BC. Ave. me – not exactly in the homeland of Dubiniai kapa culture, but in a sufficiently close geographical location.
However, some aspects of Botai’s history did not fit together. Early on, several studies showed that the mix of horse remains found in the Botai culture region was unlike that of most later pastoral cultures: Botai horses were characterized by an even distribution of stallions and mares, mostly of healthy reproductive age. Regular killing of healthy, breeding-age animals would thus deplete the breeding herd. However, this demographic mix is typical of game animals. Some Botai horses have even had spears or arrowheads embedded in their ribs, indicating that they were killed during a hunt rather than a controlled slaughter.
These unresolved disagreements overshadowed the main consensus linking the Botai culture to the domestication of horses.
New scientific tools raise more questions
In recent years, the rapid development of archaeological and scientific tools has disproved the basic assumptions about Botai, the pit-grave cultures and the first chapters of human and equine history.
First, improved biomolecular tools show that whatever happened in the Botai culture had little to do with the domestication of horses living today. in 2018 gene sequencing revealed that the Botai horses were not the ancestors of domestic horses, but of the Przewalski’s horse, a wild relative and inhabitant of the steppes, which, at least in recorded history, was never domesticated.
Further, when W. Taylor and his colleagues re-examined the skeletal features of horses associated with riding in the Botai culture, it was noticed that similar problems are seen in the wild horses of the Ice Age from North America that have certainly never been ridden. Although horse riding can cause recognizable changes in the teeth and jawbones, the researchers say that the minor problems observed in the horses of the Botai culture can reasonably be attributed to natural changes or life history.
This finding raised the question anew: were horses used for transport at all in the Botai culture?
Rejection of the Kurgan hypothesis
Attempts to understand the archaeological record of horse domestication have become increasingly controversial over the past few years.
For example, in 2023 archaeologists have noticed that human hip and leg skeletal problems found in pit grave cultures and early Eastern European cemeteries are very similar to those of horsemen – and this is consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. However, such problems can also be caused by the transport of other types of animals, including those of the pit grave culture cattle carts found at the sites.
So how should archaeologists make sense of these conflicting signals?
A clearer picture may be closer than we think, says W. Taylor. A comprehensive genomic study of early Eurasian horses, 2024. in June published in the journal Naturesuggests that the horses of the Pit Grave Culture were not the ancestors of the first domesticated horses, known as the DOM2 lineage. And the horses of the pit culture did not exhibit any genetic traits of tight reproductive control, such as those associated with inbreeding.
In contrast, the first DOM2 horses appear just before 2000. Ave. me, that is, well after the migration of the pit grave culture and just before the first burials with horses and carts appear in the archaeological record.
So far, all the evidence seems to agree that horses were most likely domesticated on the Black Sea steppes – but much later than the kurgan hypothesis suggests. On the contrary, people began to control horses just before the rapid spread of horses and chariots in Eurasia in the 2nd millennium BC. in the beginning
Of course, many questions still need to be resolved. In the latest study, the authors draw attention to some peculiar regularities in the data of the Botai culture – in particular, fluctuations in estimates of genetic generation durations, that is, basically, how long it takes an animal population to produce offspring on average. Could this mean that people of the Botai culture still raised wild Przewalski’s horses in captivity, but only for meat and not for transportation? Maybe. Future research will let us know for sure.
In any case, one thing emerges from these conflicting signals: the earliest chapters in the history of man and horse are ripe for retelling.
Parengta pagal „Conversation“.
2024-09-07 08:46:35