The First Horse Riders | Horse Domestication on the Eurasian Steppe

the domestication of the horse is one of the most important innovations in history radically altering the nature of human mobility warfare trade and agriculture horse riding changed the world forever horses were domesticated thousands of years ago on the eurasian step and they were first utilized for their milk meat and heights but who were the people who first tamed them and when did they stop using them only for food and take the unlikely quite incredible step of riding upon their backs i'm dan davis i'm a novelist and on this channel we'll talk about the real history behind my historical fantasy stories and this is the story of the first horseman now this is a contentious subject and there is ongoing debate and strong disagreement amongst academics working on this question i'm going to present two opposing views one we will call the early writing hypothesis and the other the late writing hypothesis and then i'll tell you who i think were the first horse riders in history we can start however with something that is agreed upon people hunted wild horses for thousands of years wherever people and horses occurred together the famous cave paintings from the paleolithic demonstrate the deep fascination our ancestors had for these animals they hunted them and to do so effectively they had to have a profound understanding of them and their behavior but as the ice age ended the environment changed and the range of horses shrank all over the world until they survived only in great numbers on the eurasian step and in small pockets here and there in europe anatolia and the caucasus the animals in these smaller populations were also smaller in stature than their step cousins it's quite well accepted too that modern horses all over the world today are descended from the original domestication events that occurred on the eurasian step perhaps around 4000 bc give or take a few centuries or maybe millennia so how did horse domestication happen well we can look at genetic evidence from modern and ancient horses for clues and the great genetic diversity of female horse genetics tells us that wild mares were domesticated many times over the centuries and probably over a wide area and so wild females were repeatedly brought into the domestic gene pool while male horses on the other hand have far less genetic diversity meaning that only a small number of wild males were ever domesticated now this makes sense after all mares live in hierarchical herds where they follow the lead mare while the whole herd is guarded by the stallion who protects them from predators and other outsider males other stallions live together in bachelor herds so the lower status mares in a herd or all of them other than the lead mare are predisposed to following others and this is a trait that humans took advantage of tapping into their instinct for following for compliance and obedience while untamed stallions on the other hand are highly dangerous animals who fight ferociously with one another kicking biting and stamping to cause serious injury and even death to other stallions and to predators and to any people of the step hoping to capture them did you know that male horses have four sharp canine teeth that they use only as weapons it's no wonder that in far later historical times war horses were trained to bite men and other horses and to stamp on them in combat so back on the neolithic step even if a stallion was roped and controlled their violent temperament their wild nature would have made taming them extremely difficult of course these wild horses looked very different to most horses today who have undergone selective breeding for thousands of years when wild horses were first domesticated they had far shorter legs big round bellies and big heads with stiff upright manes but still don't underestimate them imagine being face to face with a wild herd out there on the step six thousand years ago the big males might have been five feet tall seven feet long and they could have weighed seven hundred pounds our ancestors were often in awe of the power and nobility of these animals and they had the most profound respect for them and for their capabilities not just their speed and endurance but their terrifying ferocity and immense strength so why on earth would you go to the effort of taming something so terrifying instead of just shooting it with arrows and throwing spears into his flanks well one reason is that horses are perfectly adapted to living in the cold grasslands after all they thrived through the ice age they evolved to survive winter snowfalls by digging through the snow with their hoofs to the grass beneath and they break ice on rivers and ponds to get at the water beneath cattle on the other hand do not do this and they need to be fed winter forage or they will starve or cattle can follow in the wake of a horse herd and eat the grass exposed by the horses so the first horse herders might have driven wild horses into valleys and hobbled them so that they would be on hand close to the homestead to slaughter during winter snows and these neolithic step herders might have learned that such management was possible when they first adopted the innovations of cattle and sheep herding innovations that spread into the step about this time so that's managing horses for meat and maybe when they started managing them more closely they began to milk them too but when did people start riding them around this is a difficult question to answer because riding leaves almost no evidence on the remains of horses but one view proposed by many influential authors suggests that horse riding began about the same time as horse herding as far back as the 4th millennium bc when archaeological and human genetic evidence shows increased population movements across eurasia this increased movement of people coincides with a spike in the frequency of horse bones found at archaeological sites so it makes sense so the argument goes that people were herding horses from this time and also using them to get about from place to place in ways that had not been possible before and there are some sites on the western step at this time with horse-themed works of portable art like horses carved on bones and horse bones start being used in ritual or funerary contexts horse skulls and lower leg bones especially now all this is not exactly a smoking gun but it's a fair assumption isn't it there has long been this notion of the step herders riding out of the step chasing down the terrified settled farmers who could not outrun these raiders charging in on the backs of horses striking down at them with their battle axes as they thundered by on their five foot tall potbellied ponies that's pretty much what i show in my books too when david anthony's the horse the wheel and language came out back in 2007 i was still getting the train to work in london for my job as an insurance broker this was so long ago i was even reading a newspaper and i remember reading a review of this book in the arts and culture section or whatever it's not often a book on archaeology gets reviewed in a national newspaper but this one rightly became an international bestseller and it was promoted quite heavily the review i read said the topic was fascinating but the book was let down by the technical language and excessive detail and the interminable section on horse domestication that goes on far too long i mean it's called the horse the wheel and language so you know what do you expect now to be fair the horse stuff is quite detailed in the book but researchers david anthony and dorcus brown and their team conducted an innovative long and difficult study on the teeth of ancient horses and they were quite rightly very proud of their work they were looking for indentations on certain teeth that would indicate the horse had habitually taken the bit between their teeth the bit is the bar that goes through their mouth and helps the rider to control the animal this bitwear study suggested that the first ridden horses in the world may have included the battar and tursek cultures of what's now kazakhstan the battali culture dated from around 3 700 to 3000 bc and they were hunters who feasted almost entirely on horses at one site the animal bones included bison or oryx elk red deer rhodia boar beaver bear sega antelope and gazelle but 99.9 percent of the bones were from horses they really liked eating horses david anthony and his team examined the teeth and found a certain amount had this bit where they were looking for and concluded along with other evidence that these battali were therefore the first horse riders in the world these extraordinary people were not farmers or herders of cattle or sheep or anything else but they lived in houses and they only ever hunted for their food they had lived in this land probably for thousands of years doing normal mesolithic style hunting and gathering but at some point they began hunting horses almost exclusively and it was concluded from the bitwear and many other pieces of evidence that they must surely have done so from horseback because so the argument goes how else would you hunt that many fleet-footed creatures if not on horseback yourself so was it the battalion who were the first horsemen well a recent study suggests that the previous analysis was incorrect the bitwear can in fact be explained as part of natural variation rather than through repeated wearing away by bits especially considering that the earliest bits would have had to have been bone or antler or leather and so the enormous volume of horse bones at potiocites come simply from the regular mass slaughter of chevalski's horses so now it seems that the battalion were not in fact the first horse riders so what about these schwevowski's horses then because once it was thought that chevalski's horses were the surviving wild ancestors of domesticated horses but recent genetic evidence shows that that isn't the case they are from a different line and in fact far from being an ancient and untouched surviving wild population the schevsky's horses found in modern times in mongolia not kazakhstan are probably the descendants of horses that were once domesticated in the deep past but have long since been feral clearly though they're closer in morphology to the ancient wild horse than other more modern feral horses i love how they look don't you with their massive heads their proportions are somehow deeply pleasing they're beautiful animals so what other evidence is there for the early horse riding hypothesis well a vital culture in the story has long thought to be the shredney stock culture the extent to which this is really a single culture is debated but the people of the shrednestdog area were an important and influential people of the western steppe who may have been one of the forebears of the even more important chorded wear culture i mean you can't rank archaeological cultures like that can you but the corded ware were definitely ranked number one so the shrednesdog were around from about 4500 to 3500 bc and one of the settlements called derrievka contained an enormous amount of horse bones 63 of the total animal bones here were horse what's more antler artifacts found here were interpreted as cheek pieces an important part of the harness for controlling a ridden horse antler and bone cheek pieces are known from later iron age european and step cultures and so many people have argued that the shredney stock were the first horse riders in large part because of their geographical and temporal position at the edge of the subsequent expansion later from about 3500 bc you start to see horse bones beginning to appear in the settlement outside the step for example they start to appear in settlements of the micop culture in my video on the my cop we talked about the famous engraved cup with the image of the stocky step horse on it so a few horses might have made their way into the corquettes at this time perhaps traded by the steppe peoples and it's not just in the caucuses but from around 3000 bc horse bones begin to be found in settlements in the danube valley reaching as far west as bavaria this state then coincides with the expansions of the steppe herder peoples across the danube into europe and so it seems likely that the people brought their managed herds with them in their migrations but the question again goes back to this were they actually riding them or were they still only utilizing them for meat and milk how can we know proponents of the early horse riding hypothesis argue that it would have been very difficult to manage horse herds without also riding them maybe so but if the bit wear evidence for horseback riding is now perhaps on less firm footing than it once seemed where does that leave us well it's because physical evidence in the ground is so hard to come by this early riding hypothesis the one that argues that the step hurdle migrations like those of the yamnar and the corded wear were driven by horse-riding warriors must draw on other lines of evidence for example the proponents of this theory have used the example of the massive transformation that occurred when horse riding was introduced into the societies of the plains indians in america they say look at how the comanche suddenly established a vast empire based on mounted conquests and slavery thanks to their brilliant utilization of the horse surely something just like this happened on the eurasian steppe five thousand years ago too so the argument goes and if that's the case and the shredness dog domesticated horses first then surely that must mean the shredney stock were those mounted warriors and horse riding spread to the other peoples of the step enabling the expansion in all directions seen in the increased mobility patterns of the yamuna people have asked me about this before so i should say that mobility patterns can be seen archaeologically by the locations of artifacts and the distances these artifacts moved from where they were made to where they were found and they can test human and animal remains to tell whether they were raised in the same place that they died and things like that and from these kinds of analyses it's thought that the step environment was quite suddenly opened up to trade and the early yemenire settlements of the river valleys disappeared as they set out to conquer the vast expanses of the steps on their horses so were the shredney stock the first horsemen spreading their skills to their yamnaya cousins and cordedware descendants across the steps well let's have a look at the counter argument before we jump to any conclusions i'll call this one the late riding hypothesis i recently read this book militarism and the indo-europeanising of europe it's one of the best things i've read for ages largely because it challenged many of my previous understandings of the early bronze age including horse riding but why should we listen to the author robert drewes well like david anthony he's another best-selling archaeologist if you're into the bronze age you might have some of his books on your shelf now popularity alone doesn't give him credibility but one of his lifelong professional specialities is the evolution of warfare in the first civilizations and he wrote this other book called early riders the beginnings of mounted warfare in asia and europe and i read that too so this is a man worth listening to and drew's has a very different view he believes quite strongly and argues forcefully that useful horse riding did not become common until far later after the invention of the chariot in about 2000 bc and he argues that military riding that is riding by warriors to and from and around the battlefield and fighting from horseback was not historically significant until the 8th century bc he points out that quote no direct evidence for riding of any kind in the 4th or 3rd millennium bc has been found end quote in the two books i've mentioned he carefully and systematically takes down the arguments presented by the likes of david anthony one by one drews argues that the expansion of horses into the caucasus and the danube valley and anatolia from the late 4th and 3rd millennium bc was for their use as a food animal only he points out that the supposed antler cheek pieces from the shredness stock site are nothing of the kind but are instead simply tools for a variety of other tasks unrelated to horses he also says that the example of the plains indians is a poor analogy because the horses themselves were drastically different after thousands of years of artificial selection those modern horses were bred to be ridden and the peoples of the great plains could see by observing the spanish how it was to be done he argues too that horseheads could in fact have been managed by people who did not ride in the same way that herds of cattle and sheep were managed by people in the near east without horses through various methods going even further drews argues that the yamnaya hardly became more mobile at all at this time and they were not horse riders and they were certainly not horse warriors and any minor increase in mobility shown in the record was caused by their use of ox drawn wagons and new maritime technology opening trade on the black sea the horse engraved on the famous micop cup he points out has no signs of harness or anything else just like all the other images of horses on the step before 2000 bc also he says these early horses were still so small that riding them could not have conferred a great martial advantage even if they had been controllable so what is the earliest evidence for horse riding as far as drews is concerned he argues that the earliest real evidence is from mesopotamia somewhere around 2000 bc in the forms of images on seals and plaques showing riding as a kind of sport or athletic display this is because the riders seem to be unclothed and unarmed suggesting they were going for speed rather than riding in battle there were no saddles shown because saddles had not yet been invented and the riders were seated far forward on the withers or far back on the crew which seems crazy to me because surely the most obvious part to sit in is the dip the flat bit between the two high points but the first images don't actually show anyone riding like that it's been suggested that riding right at the rear allowed the rider to safely bail out backwards if they got scared or something but that doesn't exactly sound safe to me as for mechanisms of control when these first images from mesopotamia and also anatolia do show anything it seems to be a rope going to a nose ring not reigns with a bit and the horse was presumably steered or halted by pulling on this nose ring or perhaps by touching the rope to one side or the other of the neck along with the use of a goad a stick like a whip modern horsemen think that this kind of system would work for a pack horse but it would be an appalling way to control it from horseback even an impossible way in response to this early horse riding proponents say that the mesopotamians were just terrible horsemen while further to the north the people of the steppe were expert riders but drews points out there's no actual evidence for this however drews believes that a kind of horse racing sport where riders clung desperately on to the horses they barely controlled a wild kind of joyride he calls it would probably have originated in the western steppe or eastern europe where horse domestication started and later spread to mesopotamia perhaps through the micop and the caucasus or through anatolia as a kind of craze an exciting barbarian import so actually in a roundabout way drew's and the late riding proponents concur with anthony that horse riding began here at the western end of the steppe environment perhaps among the peoples we call the shredney stock culture although drew's and the others who share his point of view think that this early riding was a novelty just joyriding not for transport or warfare and had no real social impact he does believe that by 2000 bc this kind of horse riding was seen everywhere that had a step heritage and horses so even in bell beaker villages as far west as ireland for the proponents of the late riding hypothesis the development of useful horse riding was linked in some way to the development of the chariot the two-wheeled two-spoked wheels that is horse-drawn chariot was invented by the people of the cintastic culture somewhere around 2000 bc the chariot will need a video all of its own drews thinks that it was this unsatisfactory early horse riding experience the specifically the lack of comfort and control that led to the frustrated invention of the chariot and then when chariot driving was mastered only in some areas and in a far later period was it that true controlled skilled horse riding was developed this quote from drew sums up his opinion pretty well quote this picture of mounted warriors from the steppe overwhelming men on foot and overrunning much of asia and europe in the fifth and fourth millennia bc is vivid but entirely fanciful there has never been any evidence to support it as mentioned above mounted archers appear first in the 9th century bc and shock cavalry actions are not attested by our literary sources until the fifth and there has always been strong evidence that the picture was wrong after even a brief study of ancient military history one will find it impossible to imagine that any neolithic warrior no matter how well equipped was on horseback a terrifying opponent to a man on the ground end quote these are two quite different views on the development of horse riding and they can't easily be reconciled either real horse riding happened early and helped to enable the step expansions of the third millennium bc or real horse riding was far later and only really took off in the first millennium bc so what do i think about all this one thing that occurred to me reading drew's books was maybe the pupils of the step didn't need bits and reins or even nose rings to control a well-trained horse maybe they did perfectly well riding bareback and holding on to the main or maybe they use the saddle blanket and a belly band to sit on and hold on to and these things will rot away of course so it's possible there's literally no hard evidence out there to be found but if that is the way that they control their horses then it is highly unlikely that anyone could have fought effectively from horseback at this early time so it's difficult to argue with drew's although some of his points are arguments from incredulity and others are based on assumptions which is what he criticizes the early writing hypothesis for doing still i have a growing suspicion that he may very well be largely right about the mounted warrior however most people accept that horses were first domesticated in the western steppe maybe around 6 000 years ago and this fact along with the increased mobility patterns after this time makes it likely that the first horse riders were these western step herders of the late 4th millennium bc who lived in the area between the nepa and the vulgar north of the black sea maybe they weren't riding their horses into war like iron age scythians but they may well have been using them to get around so the people in what's called the shredney stock culture would in fact make a good candidate for these first horse riders and after them the practice was likely spread into europe and across asia largely by the corded ware culture and its many descendants during the third millennium bc from the far west of europe all the way to india but don't listen to me about this i just make up stories for a living if it's a subject that interests you i highly recommend you read the books i mentioned as always i have linked to the sources in the video description so what do you think are you as easily won over as me by the early riding proponents because you love step cultures or do you actually have a stringent standard of evidence like robert drewes let me know in the comments i was only able to use all that wonderful horse footage thanks to the support of my patrons if you would like to support the channel please follow the link to patreon in the description and if you liked this video then you should watch the playlists on the channel for more content like this and please subscribe so you don't miss new videos on history and prehistory thank you for watching

Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 1,296,390

Keywords: horse domestication, the first horse riders, the first horsemen, yamnaya, botai, sredny stog, bronze age, indoeuropeans, indo european history, bronze age warfare, david anthony, robert drews, who were the first horse riders, domestication of the horse, dan davis author, eurasian steppe, horse riding, yamnaya culture, the first horse warriors, mounted warfare, horse riding history, migration of indo-europeans, horse domestication documentary, horse domestication theory

Id: AMHqp0M0T4Q

Length: 26min 5sec (1565 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021