More Neolithic Y-DNA and mtDNA from Hungary, Germany and Spain (Lipson et al. 2017)

Well, in general, there is no evidence of using a horse as a transport before Sintashta. Before that, Indo-Europeans used castrated bulls harnessed to the wagon. Probably originally horse was the food and may be pack animal. It is unlikely that they ride on horses...

No

there is no evidence.

There is a ton of evidence.

It's a hotly disputed topic that people like to dismiss because it supports the crucial role of the domestic horse in IE expansions. I'm pretty sold on it for these reasons:


  • They had domestic horses, which were definitely used as a meat source.
  • There are antler cheek pieces with holes to fix a bit, so we have to conclude that they were putting bridles on their horses. There's only one reason to bridle a horse and that's to steer it.
  • The role of the horse is central in these cultures. It's everywhere in their art and ritual. Horse headed sceptors and horse figurines are all over the place as are horse sacrifices.
  • Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk were predominantly stock breeders, which included horses, cattle, sheep and pigs. There are wheat grinders and other tools associated with grain processing but there's far more evidence for stock breeding. It would be very difficult to control herds of horses and cattle without riding horses. Most would actually say that it would be impossible with only Eneolithic technology to aid you otherwise. Knowing how useful horse riders would be in such a culture while knowing that they had domestic horses that were definitely being bridled, it's hard not to conclude that they were riding horses.

One thing that's sort of strange is that the copper items found in Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk come from the Balkans, and yet we see no EEF in Khvalynsk, which is why I'm expecting to see it in Sredny Stog. Based on proximity mostly and material culture.

About Mesolithic.
It was very little studied in archeology previously time. Now the situation is changing.
In the Mesolithic Veret'e-Popovo there is already a burial of a child of 7-9 years with two dogs. Such burials with two dogs then found in the Corded Ware. Probably this is the birth of the Indo-European funeral cult and the myth about two dogs (now called "Hellhound") - guides and friends in the afterlife. Later transformed into:
-Two-headed Cerberus in Greek mythology (this variant oldest and more visually represented)
-Two dogs of Indian God of the dead Yama - Sarvara and Udumbala.
-Two dogs in the Avesta, guarding the Chinwad Bridge in the world of the dead.
-etc.
Also noteworthy is the funeral of Patroclus in the Iliad. Achiless killed two dogs, and threw them into the funeral pyre to Patroclus.

It is astoundingly, that the roots of this apparently from North Mesolithic.

This is very interesting. Dogs are also known to Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk.

People forget how deliberate burial arrangements are. Two dogs are probably not coincidental.
 
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There are antler cheek pieces with holes to fix a bit, so we have to conclude that they were putting bridles on their horses. There's only one reason to bridle a horse and that's to steer it.
I think the Dereivka cheekpiece was re-dated to the Scythian Iron Age.
 
image


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018194

There's no reason to believe the horse was domesticated in the steppe. Iberia + Iran still looks like the best bet. Heyd mentions in his recent paper that horses were far more important in Neolithic Esperstedt than in either Bell Beaker or Corded Ware.

Good paper, but it in no way opposes horse domestication on the steppe 7000 years ago. The very act of domesticating animals creates homozygosity. The best interpretation of this data is probably that lines in Europe have undergone more selective breeding. Why would the thousands of square miles of dry grassland on the steppe not be considered as a good habitat?

There's no reason to believe the horse was domesticated in the steppe.

This is absurd.

It doesn't matter. You can post all the archaeology findings, all the genetics, all the data out there that shows that Corded Ware people came with very few horses (and Bell Beaker as well), certainly weren't riding in on them bashing the Neolithic people about, whatever was going on in the steppe then or, more likely, later, but instead were walking alongside their cattle driven wagons, and it won't make a bit of difference. I've been saying all of this, and linking to the relevant research, since the time of dna forums, but it hasn't made a bit of difference.

CWC and BB weren't steppe pastoralists. They were more settled, but they certainly rode horses.
 
I think the Dereivka cheekpiece was re-dated to the Scythian Iron Age.
I know they found some conflicting spectral data, but the same bridle components are also found in Khvalysnk, so it doesn't change anything other than that Iranians have been utilizing the same technology for thousands of years.
 
I know they found some conflicting spectral data, but the same bridle components are also found in Khvalysnk, so it doesn't change anything other than that Iranians have been utilizing the same technology for thousands of years.

Dereivka = Khvalynsk (I've only encountered this name in Anthony's book)

It's quite unambiguous. The re-dating was done by Anthony.
 
Dereivka = Khvalynsk (I've only encountered this name in Anthony's book)

It's quite unambiguous. The re-dating was done by Anthony.
No, Dereivka is a Sredny Stog site. Khvalynsk is much further east on the Volga. Of course, as I keep reiterating time and again, the material cultures are essentially identical.
 
I looked it up and it seems to be a little further east, you're right. What evidencEupedia : European Travel, Trivia, History & Population Geneticse is there for cheek pieces?



That's confusing.

Sredy Stog is the same period as Khvalynsk and their artifacts are essentially identical.

Khvalynsk also had antler cheek pieces with holes that acted as bit fixtures.

Of course there's always the possibility that I'm smoking crack on this. Most of these papers are old. Widespread nomadic horse pastoralism isn't really known until much later, but these early steppe cultures look to be utilizing the domestic horse for transport as well as food. It's a central figure to their culture and it remains so until recorded history. Just read the Avestas and the Vedas.
 
It's funny too, the central role that cattle and horses played in Aryan culture is probably the most interesting part, and yet people who can't accept a steppe origin are forced to dismiss it, or down play it. It's sad.
 
Khvalynsk also had antler cheek pieces with holes that acted as bit fixtures.

Are you sure? I thought Anthony now sees the earliest evidence of cheek pieces in Kazakh Botai culture.

Though I'm not sure why horse bits were rare or absent for another 1500 years if these had been invented at such an early date. Masha Levine thinks that these people were merely hunters and didn't ride horses, so it's probably not that clear-cut.

As for cattle, cows were important in many cultures I believe. Auroch domestication in Anatolia much predates any development related to PIE.
 
Are you sure? I thought Anthony now sees the earliest evidence of cheek pieces in Kazakh Botai culture.

Though I'm not sure why horse bits were rare or absent for another 1500 years if these had been invented at such an early date. Masha Levine thinks that these people were merely hunters and didn't ride horses, so it's probably not that clear-cut.

Botai are early adopters as well.

I'm sure Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk hunted and fished, but they were surely stock breeders. There's domestic pig, sheep, cattle, dogs, and horses.

It's not the actual bit, but the bit fixture that I'm talking about. Not 1500 years. Yamnaya were undoubtedly horse riders with definite cheek pieces found in at least 2 burials that I know of. So it's not that long until we see it for sure. The horse thing is always a hot button. Perhaps people doubt that they were cheek pieces in the earlier layers, but there is definitely evidence of a move towards horse transportation seen in Yamnaya with the same sort of cheek pieces.

When I say "nomadic pastoralism" I'm talking about advanced nomadic pastoralism with field rotation schedules and what not, which aren't definitely known until historical Iranians, but it's not unlikely that Yamnaya was doing this as well. Yamnaya is mostly burials. There's hardly any settlements to speak of, which implies an advanced mobile economy.
 
Yes, I'm not attributing cattle domestication to PIE, but you can't utilize the full potential of cattle without horses. It's the combination that is so powerful. It's still utilized today in the most advanced industrialized societies, think about that one.
 
Botai are early adopters as well.

I'm sure Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk hunted and fished, but they were surely stock breeders. There's domestic pig, sheep, cattle, dogs, and horses.

It's not the actual bit, but the bit fixture that I'm talking about. Not 1500 years. Yamnaya were undoubtedly horse riders with definite cheek pieces found in at least 2 burials that I know of.

You'd think if there were cheekpieces in Yamnaya, Anthony would be very eager to point it out. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I think most of the early evidence of bone cheekpieces (i. e. the usually disc-shaped bone plates) are close to 2000 B.C. .

Perhaps cattle-herding on horseback is much more effective on horseback for commerical purposes, but I think that traditional South Asian and African herders still do it mostly by foot.
 
You'd think if there were cheekpieces in Yamnaya, Anthony would be very eager to point it out. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I think most of the early evidence of bone cheekpieces (i. e. the usually disc-shaped bone plates) are close to 2000 B.C.

2000BC is just after IEs exploded and just before their first languages are attested. Of course that will be in the range of when widespread horse riding is seen, but there are earlier examples for sure.

Perhaps cattle-herding on horseback is much more effective on horseback for commerical purposes

Exactly


Look, we're only considering things in the dirt in this discussion, but if you combine it with the linguistic it would take a very stubborn person to reject the role of horse domestication in PIE speakers. Then add the genetics to everything.
 
So just to make things clear, Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk and Lower Mikhaylovka were the undoubted cultures that became Yamnaya. So at the very least, they domesticated the horses that Yamnaya rode.
 
It's a hotly disputed topic that people like to dismiss because it supports the crucial role of the domestic horse in IE expansions. I'm pretty sold on it for these reasons:


  • They had domestic horses, which were definitely used as a meat source.
  • There are antler cheek pieces with holes to fix a bit, so we have to conclude that they were putting bridles on their horses. There's only one reason to bridle a horse and that's to steer it.
  • The role of the horse is central in these cultures. It's everywhere in their art and ritual. Horse headed sceptors and horse figurines are all over the place as are horse sacrifices.
  • Sredny Stog and Khvalynsk were predominantly stock breeders, which included horses, cattle, sheep and pigs. There are wheat grinders and other tools associated with grain processing but there's far more evidence for stock breeding. It would be very difficult to control herds of horses and cattle without riding horses. Most would actually say that it would be impossible with only Eneolithic technology to aid you otherwise. Knowing how useful horse riders would be in such a culture while knowing that they had domestic horses that were definitely being bridled, it's hard not to conclude that they were riding horses.

Yes, I know about this dispute.
Yes, in the Sredny Stog was the cult of a horse. In the 1970th it was believed that there were riders. But then arheologists came to the conclusion that the horses there were for the most part wild. And the horse-headed scepters are not horse-headed and not scepters. These are probably mythical unicorns and a priestly instrument. (Klein 2007)
Probably there was originally a cult of a wild horse.

Also, as far as I understand, there are not even any drawings of riders.
Therefore, I belong to the skeptics. The evidence base is currently weak and more speculative.
 
[/LIST]

Yes, I know about this dispute.
Yes, in the Sredny Stog was the cult of a horse. In the 1970th it was believed that there were riders. But then arheologists came to the conclusion that the horses there were for the most part wild. And the horse-headed scepters are not horse-headed and not scepters. These are probably mythical unicorns and a priestly instrument. (Klein 2007)
Probably there was originally a cult of a wild horse.

Also, as far as I understand, there are not even any drawings of riders.
Therefore, I belong to the skeptics. The evidence base is currently weak and more speculative.

The nature of early horse exploitation:

The occurrence of butchered horse bones testify that these animals were exploited for food. This was the initial stage of domestication, according to Bökönyi (1994). The hypothesis that the secondary use of the horse was for riding fighters in the Chalcolithic is not acceptable. Kozshin (1970) interpreted perforated horn objects recovered from Afanasevo Culture sites in Siberia as riding bits, but a number of scholars, including Gryaznov disagree with this interpretation. Danilenko and Shmaglii (1972) and Telegin (1973) have interpreted similar artifacts from Dereivka (Srednii Stog), and declared that the steppe horsebreeder warrior-riders had launched distant military raids. Gimbutas (1990), who received her internship in Germany, and in turn became anti-Soviet (Häusler 1996), wrote about aggressive warriors invading European farmers with fire and a sword, thus attaching a political character to the study. Recently, Anthony (1986), Anthony and Brown (1991), and Liehardus (1984) have revived the hypothesis of militant riders. The riding of horses by warriors of the Chalcolithic period has been already contended (Kuzmina 1977; 1994). Some European cultures, including those that were not familiar with the horse (Dietz 1992) as well as those in China (Komissarov 1980), have produced a number of bone objects that were similar, and according to ethnographic analogies, they may be compared with tools for uniting knots or weaving nets. This interpretation corresponds to the information obtained for fishing in Dereivka and Switzerland.

The Eurasian Steppes The Transition from Early Urbanism to Nomadism
Elena Kuzmina
Russian Institute for Cultural Research
 
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