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Horses
#16
(06-07-2024, 02:48 PM)parasar Wrote: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07597-5

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hors...ity-timing
"The Yamnaya were pioneers who hitched up cattle-drawn carts and left increasingly dry grasslands about 5,000 years ago to make new homes in Europe and Asia. Along the way, they helped build major Bronze Age cultures in Europe (SN: 11/15/17). They spread Indo-European languages and left a genetic legacy for modern people that includes increased risk of multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease (SN: 9/5/19; SN: 1/10/24).

But none of that happened on horseback, Orlando and colleagues argue. The timing just doesn’t work ...

Some researchers say the finding ignores earlier evidence of horsemanship and attempts at domestication. And, says archaeologist Volker Heyd of the University of Helsinki, the Yamnaya would have needed horses in order to spread so quickly. “Our best scenario for the rapid and extensive Yamnaya expansions, covering 5,000 kilometers and more in 100 to 200 years, [is for it] to have been facilitated by wheel and wagon and on horseback.”

Not so, says archaeologist Ursula Brosseder of the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie in Mainz, Germany. “There is a general mistake in assuming that migration needs horses. [But] humans throughout history have done their migrations mostly not with horses but on foot.” Even walking, people can cover 1,000 kilometers in a month, she says."

There is a certain class of knucklehead who wants to deny that early Indo-Europeans rode horses. I find Heyd, Kristiansen, Anthony, Mallory and the others who believe Yamnaya rode horses, followed by Corded Ware and Beaker, much more persuasive.

Yes, one can walk a long way in a month, but it is really difficult to herd horses without riding horses.
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

- Wisdom of Sirach 44:1
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#17
(06-08-2024, 12:47 AM)rmstevens2 Wrote:
(06-07-2024, 02:48 PM)parasar Wrote: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07597-5

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hors...ity-timing
"The Yamnaya were pioneers who hitched up cattle-drawn carts and left increasingly dry grasslands about 5,000 years ago to make new homes in Europe and Asia. Along the way, they helped build major Bronze Age cultures in Europe (SN: 11/15/17). They spread Indo-European languages and left a genetic legacy for modern people that includes increased risk of multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease (SN: 9/5/19; SN: 1/10/24).

But none of that happened on horseback, Orlando and colleagues argue. The timing just doesn’t work ...

Some researchers say the finding ignores earlier evidence of horsemanship and attempts at domestication. And, says archaeologist Volker Heyd of the University of Helsinki, the Yamnaya would have needed horses in order to spread so quickly. “Our best scenario for the rapid and extensive Yamnaya expansions, covering 5,000 kilometers and more in 100 to 200 years, [is for it] to have been facilitated by wheel and wagon and on horseback.”

Not so, says archaeologist Ursula Brosseder of the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie in Mainz, Germany. “There is a general mistake in assuming that migration needs horses. [But] humans throughout history have done their migrations mostly not with horses but on foot.” Even walking, people can cover 1,000 kilometers in a month, she says."

There is a certain class of knucklehead who wants to deny that early Indo-Europeans rode horses. I find Heyd, Kristiansen, Anthony, Mallory and the others who believe Yamnaya rode horses, followed by Corded Ware and Beaker, much more persuasive.

Yes, one can walk a long way in a month, but it is really difficult to herd horses without riding horses.
 
How about the evidence from the east of Yamnaya?  We have R1b-L51 P310 circa 3120BCE from Shatar Chuluu ("Bayankhongor aimag, Erdenetsogt sum, Shatar chuluu")
Also mt-U5a1 ("Afanasievo archaeological culture in Bayankhongor Province, Erdenetsogt Township, at the site of Shatar Chuluu ... circa late 4th millennium BCE  ... possibly early pastoralists with limited seasonal mobility, similar to Afanasievo communities of the west. However, it is important to note that although Afanasievo style ceramics and burial types were identified at Shatar Chuluu, no faunal materials or other evidence for lifeways in this region have been reported ... These decorations as well as the shape and size of the original ceramic jars were immediately recognized as diagnostic Afansievo forms similar to those know from the Altai, Minusinsk, and Tuva regions of South Siberia ... the Shatar Chuluu burials also have notable differences from other Afanasievo burial grounds including a lack of additional burial furnishings besides ceramics and no inclusion of animal offerings. These similarities and differences in burial practice have led the most recent expert study of Shatar Chuluu to conclude that the site represents a variant of Afanasievo traditions most similar to those known from Tuva ... The mtDNA haplotype U5a1 and calibrated radiocarbon date result of 3054-2920 BCE are consistent with what is currently known about the Afanasievo archaeological record and ancient genetics, thus hypotheses that assume little to no western migration before the Bronze Age east of the Altai Mountains, must be reconsidered in this light.")
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/vie..._preprints

But no horses?
"As it currently stands, domesticated horses do not appear to have arrived in the region until ~1200 BCE"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9094512/
[Image: pone.0265775.g001.jpg]
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#18
Could the discussion about horses and Steppe people be moved to https://genarchivist.com/showthread.php?tid=878 ?
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#19
(06-08-2024, 04:22 PM)ArmandoR1b Wrote: Could the discussion about horses and Steppe people be moved to https://genarchivist.com/showthread.php?tid=878 ?

That's probably a good idea.
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

- Wisdom of Sirach 44:1
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#20
Genetic characterization of horses in Early Medieval Poland

Danijela Popović, Mateusz Baca, Martyna Wiejacka, Wojciech Chudziak, Daniel Makowiecki
[Image: elsevier-non-solus.png]Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Volume 56, June 2024, 104530
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...9X24001585 

Highlights

  • Interdisciplinary study of Early Medieval horses in Poland.

  • Medieval horses in Poland were rather small, and solid coat colours were dominant.

  • More than 80% of the specimens were genetically identified as males.

  • The lack of a significant genetic differences between various regions.

  • Absence of the donkeys and mules.

There were 61 direct radiocarbon dates for the analysed horses: 49 obtained here and 12 previously dated specimens (seven published and five unpublished) (Supplementary Table S1). Most dates ranged between the 9th and 13th centuries and confirmed the chronology of the horse remains based on archaeological criteria. However, we found that three specimens were older (two from Hallstatt–La Téne and one from the Roman period), while three were dated to the end of the Middle Ages and the...
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#21
(07-10-2024, 08:18 PM)sirdan Wrote: Genetic characterization of horses in Early Medieval Poland
Danijela Popović, Mateusz Baca, Martyna Wiejacka, Wojciech Chudziak, Daniel Makowiecki
[Image: elsevier-non-solus.png]Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Volume 56, June 2024, 104530
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...9X24001585 
Highlights

  • Interdisciplinary study of Early Medieval horses in Poland.

  • Medieval horses in Poland were rather small, and solid coat colours were dominant.

  • More than 80% of the specimens were genetically identified as males.

  • The lack of a significant genetic differences between various regions.

  • Absence of the donkeys and mules.

There were 61 direct radiocarbon dates for the analysed horses: 49 obtained here and 12 previously dated specimens (seven published and five unpublished) (Supplementary Table S1). Most dates ranged between the 9th and 13th centuries and confirmed the chronology of the horse remains based on archaeological criteria. However, we found that three specimens were older (two from Hallstatt–La Téne and one from the Roman period), while three were dated to the end of the Middle Ages and the...
Male horses are basically unridable without neutering, my guess male horses were used for food mostly, and this would explain sex discrepancy on founds.
In Slavic languages Kobila(and its language variations) is a word for mare, a female horse, while Konj is blanket term(like sheep and ram, but other way around), and its probably related to Cavallo, Cavalry trough same IE root, even tho we use Konjica for cavalry which stems from Konj(j like y in yes), I believe for a big chunk of history predominately mares were used for riding and transportation, and those would usually die either on battlefields, or on travel out of exhaustion, and thus have remains scattered and consumed by predators
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#22
(06-07-2024, 02:48 PM)parasar Wrote: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07597-5

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hors...ity-timing
"The Yamnaya were pioneers who hitched up cattle-drawn carts and left increasingly dry grasslands about 5,000 years ago to make new homes in Europe and Asia. Along the way, they helped build major Bronze Age cultures in Europe (SN: 11/15/17). They spread Indo-European languages and left a genetic legacy for modern people that includes increased risk of multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease (SN: 9/5/19; SN: 1/10/24).

But none of that happened on horseback, Orlando and colleagues argue. The timing just doesn’t work ...

Some researchers say the finding ignores earlier evidence of horsemanship and attempts at domestication. And, says archaeologist Volker Heyd of the University of Helsinki, the Yamnaya would have needed horses in order to spread so quickly. “Our best scenario for the rapid and extensive Yamnaya expansions, covering 5,000 kilometers and more in 100 to 200 years, [is for it] to have been facilitated by wheel and wagon and on horseback.”

Not so, says archaeologist Ursula Brosseder of the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie in Mainz, Germany. “There is a general mistake in assuming that migration needs horses. [But] humans throughout history have done their migrations mostly not with horses but on foot.” Even walking, people can cover 1,000 kilometers in a month, she says."
I am curious as to what archaealogical and genetic evidence there is available to support these theories. Would not the vast majority of horses that were then domesticated have ended up being butchered or killed in battle and scavenged by animals? So how can we be very sure at all about their movements. Until there was so many domesticated horses that some broke off to form wild groups who then perchance died somehow that the remains are preserved so that we can find them. The instances where a horse was buried, say with a Chief or King etc. must be rare, and if this did happen, no doubt we have not found most of these burials yet.
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#23
New article here with a good summing up of all the current research, and how the domestication of horses relates to the Kurgan hypothesis

Domesticating horses had a huge impact on human society − new science rewrites where and when it first happened
Author - William Taylor, Assistant Professor and Curator of Archaeology, University of Colorado Boulder

https://theconversation.com/domesticatin...ned-226800

Basically it says there are two likely possible domestication events, but the earlier may have mainly been keeping horse for meat. But it also says that the evidence of the Botai people domesticating horses because of perceived changes to the teeth and bones of the jaw ascribed to riding, may not have been correct as it is also seen in ice age wild horses of North America. So is it possible that the Yamnaya did take an earlier horse on their migrations, but used them almost exclusively for meat? But then a better horse was bred, strong, faster etc. c. 2000BC, and through trade, and conquest, these better horses fairly rapidly spread as they gave their owners such significant advantage in warfare and hunting?

Some other interesting articles here, on research that came out last year about how the European horse spread to the North American west, through Spanish importation, much earlier than was thought

"After examining archaeological remains of horses, researchers suggest Indigenous peoples had spread the animals through the American West by the first half of the 1600s—before they encountered Europeans. "

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180981912/

Horses in the North American West - Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado Boulder

https://www.colorado.edu/cumuseum/horses...rican-west

The extinct North American horse, equus scotti
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ancient-horse.htm
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#24
The studies referred to in the news stories above posted by Rufus191 are the following:

William Timothy Treal Taylor et al.,
Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies.
Science379,1316-1323(2023).
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adc9691
30 Mar 2023 

Abstract
The horse is central to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. However, when and how horses were first integrated into Indigenous lifeways remain contentious, with extant models derived largely from colonial records. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of an assemblage of historic archaeological horse remains, integrating genomic, isotopic, radiocarbon, and paleopathological evidence. Archaeological and modern North American horses show strong Iberian genetic affinities, with later influx from British sources, but no Viking proximity. Horses rapidly spread from the south into the northern Rockies and central plains by the first half of the 17th century CE, likely through Indigenous exchange networks. They were deeply integrated into Indigenous societies before the arrival of 18th-century European observers, as reflected in herd management, ceremonial practices, and culture.


Librado, P., Tressières, G., Chauvey, L. et al. 
Widespread horse-based mobility arose around 2200 bce in Eurasia.
Nature 631, 819–825 (2024). 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07597-5
06 June 2024 

Abstract
Horses revolutionized human history with fast mobility1. However, the timeline between their domestication and their widespread integration as a means of transport remains contentious2,3,4. Here we assemble a collection of 475 ancient horse genomes to assess the period when these animals were first reshaped by human agency in Eurasia. We find that reproductive control of the modern domestic lineage emerged around 2200 bce, through close-kin mating and shortened generation times. Reproductive control emerged following a severe domestication bottleneck starting no earlier than approximately 2700 bce, and coincided with a sudden expansion across Eurasia that ultimately resulted in the replacement of nearly every local horse lineage. This expansion marked the rise of widespread horse-based mobility in human history, which refutes the commonly held narrative of large horse herds accompanying the massive migration of steppe peoples across Europe around 3000 bce and earlier3,5. Finally, we detect significantly shortened generation times at Botai around 3500 bce, a settlement from central Asia associated with corrals and a subsistence economy centred on horses6,7. This supports local horse husbandry before the rise of modern domestic bloodlines.
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#25
Genetic variability and history of a native Finnish horse breed

https://gsejournal.biomedcentral.com/art...019-0480-8
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