The Yamnaya were nomadic herders of cattle and sheep. They stretched across the Pontic Steppe, in western Europe, from the north of the Black Sea to the south of the Ural Mountains. Theirs is one of the last Bronze Age cultures, and according to the latest findings, they were the world's first horsemen.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered evidence of horse riding in human skeletons found in burial mounds called kurgans dating back between 4,500 and 5,000 years.
“Equestrianism appears to have evolved shortly after the supposed domestication of horses on the western Eurasian steppes during the fourth millennium BCE. and it was already quite common among members of the Yamnaya culture around 3,000 and 2,500 BC,” says archeology professor Volker Heyd, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Science Advances.
In search of new greener pastures, the Yamnayas had migrated from the Pontic steppes to areas located in the current countries of Romania and Bulgaria, also reaching Hungary and Serbia. These regions to the west of the Black Sea were a contact zone where these groups of herders first encountered the farming communities established in that area since Neolithic times.
By adopting the wheel and cart, the Yamna culture improved their mobility and were able to exploit a huge resource that would otherwise be beyond their reach: the steppe grasslands located far from the rivers, which allowed them to maintain large herds of cows. and sheep. In barely two centuries they spread to cover more than 5,000 kilometers between Hungary and Mongolia and western China, being the first to spread the Proto-Indo-European languages.
For decades, historians understood this expansion of people from the steppe as a violent invasion. “Our research is beginning to provide a more nuanced picture of these interactions. For example, findings of physical violence are practically non-existent so far. We also began to understand the complex exchange processes in material culture and funeral customs between newcomers and locals in the 200 years after their first contact,” says Bianca Preda-Bălănică.
The study of ancient DNA has allowed us to see that the differences between these immigrants from the east and the members of the local societies were even more pronounced.
The use of animals for transport, particularly the horse, marked a turning point in the history of humanity. The considerable benefit that terms of mobility and distance provided had profound effects on land use, trade, and also warfare.
The studies had mainly focused on the horses themselves. But horsemanship is an interaction of two components, the mount and its rider. And the advantage is that human remains are available in greater numbers and in a more complete state than early horse remains.
“We studied more than 217 skeletons from 39 different sites, of which about 150 were found in the Yamnaya burial mounds. There are no particular traits that indicate a certain occupation or behavior. But if all are combined, the conclusions provide reliable information to understand habitual activities of the past”, explains bioanthropologist Martin Trautmann, lead author of the study.
The experts decided to use a set of six criteria as indicators of equestrian activity (the so-called “riding syndrome”): Muscle attachment sites on the pelvis and femur, changes in the normally round shape of the hip sockets, impression marks caused by pressure of the acetabular rim on the neck of the femur, the diameter and shape of the femoral shaft, vertebral degeneration caused by repeated vertical impact, and trauma that can typically be caused by falls, kicks, or horse bites .
In total, of the 156 adult individuals tested, at least 24 can be classified as "possible riders", while five Yamnaya and four other humans have been classified as "very likely riders". “These people were riding horses regularly,” says Trautmann.
“There is a tomb dated around 4300 B.C. at Csongrad-Kettöshalom in Hungary, long suspected of being occupied by an immigrant from the steppes. The skeleton surprisingly showed four of the six pathologies of horsemanship, possibly indicating that this practice could even predate the Yamnaya by a millennium. But an isolated case cannot support a firm conclusion, although in Neolithic cemeteries on the steppes equine remains were occasionally placed in human graves and stone maces carved into the shape of horse heads,” says Professor David Anthony of Hartwick College and co-senior author of the study.
