A group of archaeologists based out of the University of Colorado Boulder have revealed some fascinating findings about the link between human skeletons and the emergence of horseback riding. The results contradicted a well-accepted explanation regarding the domestication of horses and how this event could have affected the branching out of Indo-European languages.
The Skeletal Signature of Horseback Riding
Riding a horse is tough on the human body and archaeologists have thought for a long time that this impact could be visible in the skeletons of ancient riders. But new study conducted by University of Colorado Boulder shows the plot is far more complicated.
Skeletons are a dynamic structure that can change shape throughout a person’s life, said lead author Lauren Hosek, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. Even the bones bare evidence of long horse rides or lounging in sedentary positions. As an illustration, the ball and socket of the hip joint might elongate further because of the growing repeated flexing.
Except that those skeletal alterations are not inherent to horseback riding. Other activities, such as yoked transport with cattle, donkeys or wild asses, would also create the same types of bone modifications. Therefore, if archaeologists find a human who died say 15,000 years ago and came into contact with horses but this individual is missing the Y-chromosome variant gene that comes from Aryans they can not definitively claim that person was a horse rider.
Debunking the Kurgan Theory
In other words, the impact of horseback riding is about more than just physical effects. It could also contradict the Kurgan hypothesis — a theory in archaeology.
This theory suggests that the connection between people and these animals started much sooner as was unarguably proven. Advocates say the original horse-riders were probably the Yamnaya, a people who roamed the steppes near the Black Sea by 4000 B.C. That would have allowed these languages which are still spoken today to develop further into what contains evolved into modern languages we speak like English and French.
In other words: In a little more than one-fourth of our evolutionary history, certain men killed thousands of people with that chain and then they rode their horses to deliver an Asterix comic from the Alps to Greece — or should we say preached peace along with sweet music composed on pan flutes? These bones, the theory goes, exhibited damage that may have resulted from horseback riding among these early humans.
However, Hosek and her co-author, William Taylor of the CU Museum of Natural History’s Department of Anthropology, suggest in their new study that the story is much more complex. The skeletal changes seen in the Yamnaya remains may have resulted from any number of activities, and the team says that while it is likely for them to have ridden horses, this would not be a certainty.
Conclusion
The bones of a horse can provide key information about ancient human culture, behavior and environments around the world, yet the story we’re able to tell simply depends on where the fossil was found. This physical record can offer meaningful clues, but does not itself directly answer the question of when humans began to make use of horses for travel. The results contradict perceptions rooted in the traditional Kurgan hypothesis and underline the importance of a multifaceted, interdisciplinary view of how human–horse relationships developed and influenced life in prehistoric Eurasia.
