Who was the first human to ride a horse? Distant descendants of that first rider may have crossed continents and built empires on horseback. is not a question that can be answered. Horseback riding began in an era when few horses survived.
As it happens, you don’t have to find a horse to find traces of a person riding it. Instead, clues could be found in the remains of human riders. Life on horseback warps human bones. Thanks to skeletal imprints like this, archaeologists may have found the earliest evidence of human riding on horses. It dates back to 3000 BC, as reported in research. It was published in the journal scientific progress today.
“It’s not just a horse as a vehicle, it’s also a rider,” he says. Volker Hyde, an archaeologist and one of the study authors at the University of Helsinki, Finland. “And we were looking at humans.”
The skeleton in question was once Yamnaya cultureAbout 5,000 years ago, they lived in what is now southeastern Europe. However, they died prehistorically, so there aren’t many traces of the “culture” that many of us imagine. Instead, archaeologists have found evidence that the Yamnaya made similar objects and practiced similar lifestyles. These people roamed the steppes, herded cattle and drove wheeled wagons.some scholars believe They spoke a distant precedent for today’s Indo-European languages. Perhaps most impressively, they buried their dead under what we call towering mounds. Kurgans.
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We know that the Yamnaya kept horses, but we don’t know if they kept them simply for their milk and meat, or if they actually rode them. Equestrian equipment such as reins and saddles were probably made from long-decomposed organic materials.
But horses are only half the horse. Archaeologists can probably find the other half inside Yamnaya Kurgan, in human bones that can tell their own stories.
That’s because primates like us humans weren’t made to ride horses. Birgit Buehler, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna, Austria. “Horses weren’t made to carry us.” With no saddles or stirrups, they require repeated movements of the lower body and thighs to maintain balance. With all biological matter in motion, horse riding, like other mechanical movements, leaves an imprint on human bones.
The human skeleton changes in response to decades of repeated stress from riding horses. The bone tissue in the pelvis and femur may thicken and become dense. The bones in your hips rub against each other and can build up calcium. The vertebrae of the spine may become distorted or deformed. Horses can also bite, kick, step on, and throw riders, all of which can break bones.
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Researchers call these symptoms of “horsemanship syndrome” or “riding syndrome.”Other activities may cause individual changes, but combinations of these markers can be telltale signs of equestrian life. Aval: Equestrian nomads from the steppes of Asia who rode west to dominate swaths of central and eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages.
It is already difficult to study 1,500-year-old bones. Even more so in the study of three times older bones. However, the study’s authors found multiple marks of horse riding on one of his 4,500-year-old skeletons found in Strainik, Romania.
“Finding it was a bit of a surprise to all of us,” he said. Martin Trautmannan archaeologist at the University of Helsinki, and another research author.
To further confirm whether the Yamnaya were horse-riding, the authors examined all bones of this group unearthed from sites in Bulgaria, Czech, Hungary, and Romania. There are also ruins that were excavated decades ago.
Just because it had bones doesn’t mean it had all bones. “On average, about half of the skeleton is preserved, but the half we have is severely eroded at times,” says Trautmann. The authors evaluated the skeletons of 24 ancient humans against his list of six criteria, which were consistent with the first of his Strjnicu skeletons. They diagnosed four additional bone sets from 3021 to 2501 BC that fit at least four of the criteria for Equestrian Syndrome.
we know that we are human first domesticated Horse around 4000 BC.We also know that the first tank woke up Around 2000 BC. If these skeletons are evidence of an equestrian, they could provide an important “missing link” between the two.
“If you look at the wider context of Yamnaya, it’s not all that surprising,” says Heyd. Archaeologists believe that the Yamnaya culture spread rapidly across the European steppes in just a few decades. “How could this be possible without horseback riding?” he says.
Not conclusive proof. The ravages of time by erasing bones ensured this. Bühler, who was not involved in the study but called it an “excellent paper,” points out that the authors missed one of the key criteria in other equestrian syndrome studies. I didn’t have a hip socket to measure properly.
“It’s not their fault because the ingredients aren’t there,” says Bühler. Future discoveries could yield the complete skeleton archaeologists need, she says. Until then, she says, she is “beware” of the interpretation that these people were on horseback.
The authors may still be discovering those bones. Their Yamnaya research is not over yet.
