The Yamnaya may have been the world’s first known horse riders

Stress – The story of the first horse riders can be inscribed on the bones of the ancient Yamnaya people.

Five excavated skeletons dated to about 3,000 to 2,500 BC show clear signs of physical stress that may indicate Yamnaya individuals frequently rode horses, researchers reported March 3 at the American Association of Science and Technology’s Annual Congress. Journal of Sciences. That makes the most ancient people of Yamnaya probably known as horse riders.

Five thousand years ago the Yamnaya migrated widely, spreading the Indo-European languages ​​and exchanging the human race across Europe and Asia (SN: 11/15/17; SN: 9/5/19). Their journeys are thought to have spanned nearly 4,500 kilometers from present-day Hungary to Mongolia in just two centuries.

“In many ways, [the Yamnaya] it changed the history of Eurasia”, says archaeologist Volker Heyd of the University of Helsinki.

Domestication of horses was largely established around 3500 BC, probably for milk and meat.SN: 7/6/17). Some researchers have suggested that the Botai people of present-day Kazakhstan started riding horses at that time, but this is disputed.SN: 3/5/09). Yamnaya also had horses, and archaeologists thought the people probably rode them, but evidence is lacking.

But the oldest known depictions of riding are from 2000 BC. Complicating the effort is that when behavior emerged, it was possible that riding gear was made of the oldest natural materials, and scientists rarely, if ever, find intact horse skeletons from that time. .

Heyd and colleagues were not looking for evidence of riding. They were working on a large project called Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe, to include all human life.

While examining over 200 human skeletons excavated from countries including Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, bioanthropologist Martin Trautmann noticed that one individual bone had a distinct femur and other features that he had not seen before. He immediately suspected that he was riding.

“It was just kind of surprising,” says Trautmann, also of the University of Helsinki.

If there was a reason, he says he would have let her go. But as he continues to examine the skeletons, he notices that they have several features.

Trautmann, Heyd and colleagues evaluated all skeletons for the presence of six physical signs of riding that had been documented in previous research, known as the constellation of riding syndrome. These signs include pelvis and femur marks that could have resulted from the biomechanical stress of sitting with legs spread while restraining the horse, and vertebral damage from injuries that could have resulted from falling. The team also created a scoring system to account for the severity, preservation and relative importance of skeletal features.

“Bones are living tissue,” says Trautmann. “And so they fight against any kind of environmental stimulus.”

A team of five strong Yamnaya thought that the horsemen were so numerous because they had four or more riding standards. Nine other Yamnaya males were probably riding horses, but researchers were less confident because the skeletons showed only three shooters each.

“Hypothetically very logical,” says bioarchaeologist Maria Mednikova of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, who was not involved in the new study. Yamnaya horses were closer, he said, so riding at some point was probably a test.

She is now thinking of marking the cavalry in Yamnaya to check the approach of the skeletons. “The human system of crime is like a book – if you have some knowledge, you can read it,” Mednikova says.

Archaeologist Ursula Brosseder, who was also not involved in the work, advises not to interpret this find as equestrianism reaching its full bloom in Yamnaya. Brosseder, formerly of the University of Bonn in Germany, sees the papers found as people still wondering what they could do with horses as part of the domestic household.

As for Heyd, he says that he had long suspected that Yamnaya rode horses, considering that they had animals and spread so rapidly over such a large area. “We’re trying now.”