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World's 1st horseback riders swept across Europe roughly 5,000 years ago
LiveScience ^ | March 3, 2023 | Kristina Killgrove

Posted on 03/11/2023 7:57:54 AM PST by SunkenCiv

...Archaeologists accidentally discovered the world's earliest horseback riders while studying skeletons found beneath 5,000-year-old burial mounds in Europe and Asia... part of the so-called Yamnaya culture, groups of semi-nomadic people who swept across Europe and western Asia, bringing the precursor to the Indo-European language family with them...

The new analysis came from 217 human skeletons from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a geographical area that runs roughly from Bulgaria to Kazakhstan... 5,000-year-old horse skeletons show wear on their teeth that could have been from bridles, while others have found possible fenced enclosures. In the same time period, horse milk peptides have been detected in the dental plaque of people from Russia. Importantly, the geographical explosion of the Yamnaya culture — which expanded across 3,000 miles (4,500 kilometers) over a mere century or two — suggests horses may have assisted as transportation animals...

Since bone is a living tissue, it responds to stresses placed on it. Consistent horseback riding can cause trauma and spine degeneration, but it can also result in more subtle changes to the leg and hip bones as the human body adapts to regular riding.

In the skeletons from 39 sites across Eastern Europe, Trautmann and colleagues found that two dozen had at least half of the traits of horsemanship syndrome.

They are most confident, however, about the identification of five Yamnaya culture individuals hailing from what is now Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary as likely equestrians...

Expanding so quickly and spreading their genes over such a vast area would have been difficult without horses.

Although skeletons with horsemanship syndrome are rarely found, their identification by archaeologists gives us new information about what it was like to live on the eastern steppe five millennia ago.

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: afanasievo; ancientautopsies; animalhusbandry; bronzeage; dietandcuisine; domestication; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; horse; horses; indoeuropean; steppe; yamnaya
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To: SunkenCiv

Sounds like there was a big genetic turn over as well during the younger dryas in Europe.


41 posted on 03/12/2023 6:31:45 AM PDT by ckilmer (q)
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To: gleeaikin

An anachronistic political agenda is not the same thing as history or archaeology.

The DNA I had done didn’t include archaic DNA, I had to use my raw file to get analyzed for that. Ancestry at that time didn’t even look for or maybe just didn’t report Ashkenazi roots, which I figured would be there (and is, Ancestry just didn’t tell me). Ancestry did show a tiny (less than 1 percent) Native American, which turned out to be lurking in the archaic DNA, and originating pre-Bering Strait. :^)


42 posted on 03/12/2023 8:46:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: seowulf; SunkenCiv
War Of The Heavenly Horses

"Blood-sweating" Horse Sparks Chinese Equestrian Interest

Pants were not invented until people began horse back riding:

These Are the World's Oldest Pants

"Jeans may have been invented in 1873, but these trousers beat that date by a long shot. A pair of wool pants was recently discovered in a graveyard in western China’s Tarim Basin dating back to around 3,300 years ago. They’re the oldest pants archaeologists have ever found—though they look like they might fit in quite well at Anthropology."

43 posted on 03/12/2023 10:41:51 AM PDT by blam
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To: blam
Pants were not invented until people began horse back riding

Well, I for one would not want to ride a horse wearing a kilt; especially as a "true Scotsman".

44 posted on 03/12/2023 12:13:12 PM PDT by seowulf (Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos...Will Durant)
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To: blam

The Han considered an alliance with the Romans to get the intervening adversaries into a vice. Instead, a plague hit the entire ancient world, leading to (well documented by court records) devastation of the Han armies as well as the (also documented) Roman armies, and luckily for Rome, the Parthians and luckily for both, the wild lawless hordes of the steppe.


45 posted on 03/12/2023 1:48:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: ckilmer; SunkenCiv; DoughtyOne; All

I suspect that the Basques were one, perhaps the only, European civilization which were not displaced by the horse conquerers. Basque language is not traceable to any other language. When the men were killed, the women were eventually forced to adopt the language of the conquerers. I wonder if male Basque dna has been analyzed with this question in mind?


46 posted on 03/12/2023 4:42:48 PM PDT by gleeaikin (Question authority!)
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To: gleeaikin
Interesting thought...


47 posted on 03/12/2023 7:01:39 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USofA & to the Constitutional REPUBLIC for? which it stands.)
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To: Candor7

My Prussian great grandfather would have said keep those foreigners out of the country.


48 posted on 03/12/2023 7:34:25 PM PDT by Fred Nerks (Fair Dinkum!)
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To: Fred Nerks; All

My Prussian great grandfather was probably partly decended from those “foreigners”. His surname included the honorific “von”


49 posted on 03/12/2023 8:25:57 PM PDT by gleeaikin (Question authority!)
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To: gleeaikin
IMHO, in a word, no. The ancestors of the Basques probably weren't in Europe when this happened.
America B.C.
by Barry Fell
(1976)
find it in a nearby library
A fascinating letter I received from a Shoshone Indian who had been traveling in the Basque country of Spain tells of his recognition of Shoshone words over there, including his own name, whose Shoshone meaning proved to match the meaning attached to a similar word by the modern Basques. Unfortunately I mislaid this interesting letter. If the Shoshone scholar who wrote to me should chance to see these words I hope he will forgive me and contact me again. The modern Basque settlers of Idaho may perhaps bring forth a linguist to investigate matters raised in this chapter. /snip [p 173]

50 posted on 03/12/2023 10:21:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Fred Nerks

YOu were Yamana before your Yagrampa....Ha HA!


51 posted on 03/12/2023 10:24:07 PM PDT by Candor7 ( ( Ask not for whom THE Trump trolls...He trolls for thee!))
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To: SunkenCiv; ckilmer; Fred Nerks; DoughtyOne; blam; All

I may not have a chance to dive into the Basque issues until after tax season. Did Barry Fell analyze the ancient Basque writing as he did others from that time and region? I don’t remember if he and Gloria Farley ever looked at that.

I do know that Portuguese sailors were fishing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland very early on. Could Basques also have done so? There is also the report that Mandan Indians apparently knew some Welsh words. Were there also Welsh fishermen in those early centuries. At any rate I wonder if it may be just as likely that Basques and Welsh met up with American Indians on shores not too far from the Grand Banks and left their language traces. I now consider it less likely that American Indians traveled to Europe and left language traces. Perhaps after reading some of the links you have left here and at the other links listed I may have a revised opinion.

The article you posted about which Indians hated which Indians the most not long ago, certainly tells an interesting story about how they progressively pushed or were pushed from East to West over the centuries. Where did the Shoshone and Mandens originate or live 2000 years ago?


52 posted on 03/13/2023 1:50:20 AM PDT by gleeaikin (Question authority!)
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To: gleeaikin

There was a Basque chauvanist in the ESOP group who pushed a pro-Basque agenda and denigrated much of the other (real) work on ESOP.


53 posted on 03/13/2023 3:28:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: SunkenCiv

You just posted this for me. Thank you Civ!!!


54 posted on 07/12/2024 6:55:36 PM PDT by BobL
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To: BobL

My pleasure.


55 posted on 07/12/2024 7:16:52 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (The Demagogic Party is a collection of violent, rival street gangs.)
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