First riders ‘reshaped Europe’
Archaeologists have found the earliest direct evidence for horseback riding – an innovation that would transform history – in 5000-year-old human skeletons in central Europe.
Researchers analysed more than 200 Bronze Age skeletal remains in museum collections in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic to look for signs of what study coauthor and University of Helsinki anthropologist Martin Trautmann called ‘‘horse rider syndrome’’ – six telltale markers, including characteristic wear marks on the hip sockets, thigh bone and pelvis.
The researchers identified five likely riders who lived around 4500 to 5000 years ago and belonged to a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya. The study was published yesterday in the journal Science Advances.
Domesticating wild horses on the plains of Eurasia was a process, not a single event, the researchers say. Archaeologists have previously found evidence of people consuming horse milk, and indications of horses controlled by harnesses and bits dating back more than 5000 years, but this does not necessarily indicate that the horses were ridden.
The Yamnaya culture, known for its characteristic burial mounds, originated in what is
now part of Ukraine and western Russia. The horses they kept were distinct from modern horses.
The Yamnaya were significant because of their dramatic expansion across Eurasia in only a few generations, moving west to Hungary and east to Mongolia, said University of Helsinki archaeologist and study coauthor Volker Heyd.
‘‘The spread of Indo-European languages is linked to their movement, and they reshaped the genetic makeup of Europe.’’
Their relationship with horses may have partly enabled this
stunning movement, the researchers suggested. ‘‘You begin to think about places previously out of reach as being reachable,’’ said David Anthony, a co-author of the study and an archaeologist at Hartwick College in New York.
This did not mean that the Yamnaya were warriors on horseback, as the horses they rode were probably too skittish for stressful battlefield situations, he said. But horses may have allowed the Yamnaya to more effectively send communications, build alliances, and manage the herds of cattle that were central to their economy.