Yamnaya 'cowboys' skeletons and evidence for horseback riding

 Salvete Omnes.

March is upon us - bring peace to Ukraine, especially the Donbas  region...

 

photo credit: A. Frînculeasa, Prahova County Museum of History and Archaeology

a short entry -   the bioanthropological evidence for Yamnaya horsemanship, published in Science, vol 9, no.9, (March 3, 2023) .
Nota bene another Science article about the first horse tamers from the Eurasian steppe.

The Yamnaya Culture, the herders, horses, artefacts etc has been subject of my posts in the past, you can click on labels to go to those entries.
Today, a link to the article on skeletal remains of those Yamnaya cowboys' analysis from the point of view of osteological evidence.  

 

from the Abstract  - the entire article here.

The origins of horseback riding remain elusive. Scientific studies show that horses were kept for their milk ~3500 to 3000 BCE, widely accepted as indicating domestication. 

However, this does not confirm them to be ridden. Equipment used by early riders is rarely preserved, and the reliability of equine dental and mandibular pathologies remains contested. 

However, horsemanship has two interacting components: the horse as mount and the human as rider. Alterations associated with riding in human skeletons therefore possibly provide the best source of information. 

Here, we report five Yamnaya individuals well-dated to 3021 to 2501 calibrated BCE from kurgans in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, displaying changes in bone morphology and distinct pathologies associated with horseback riding. 

These are the oldest humans identified as riders so far.

  Skeletons from Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania were studied and analyzed. Perhaps due to the Russia-Ukraine war no tests were done on the skeletons originated from burials further east in the Western Eurasian steppe.

 

 Nota bene , they found probable origin of the Bubonic plague in the Late Neolithic/Bronze Age gravesites.

Valete