(CN) — Exactly when and where the horse was first domesticated remains, believe it or not, a hotly debated topic in anthropology. New research out of the University of Helsinki, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, adds weight to the theory that it was Yamnaya culture, a nomadic Bronze Age steppe people, and that horses were well domesticated by the third millennium B.C.
"Horseback riding seems to have evolved not long after the presumed domestication of horses in the western Eurasian steppes during the fourth millennium BCE," said Volker Heyd, a professor of archaeology at the University of Helsinki and one of the researchers who worked on the paper, in a statement accompanying the study. "It was already rather common in members of the Yamnaya culture between 3000 and 2500 BCE."
Most research into the origins of animal husbandry has focused on the horse — where it was buried and what, if anything, it was buried with — say for example a chariot or a saddle. But Friday's research focused on the skeletal remains of humans.
The team, led by Martin Trautmann, a post-doctoral researcher in the field of bioanthropology, studied more than 217 skeletons, most of which were found in burial mounds called kurgans belonging to Yamnayans. The team measured six diagnostic criteria in each of the skeletons as an indicator of riding activity — sometimes called “horsemanship syndrome." For example, trauma that may have been caused by falls, kicks or bites from horses or vertebral degeneration caused by repeated vertical impact.
Out of the 156 adult skeletons, the team classified at least 24 (roughly 15%) as "possible riders," based on the six indicators.
"The rather high prevalence of these traits in the skeleton record, especially with respect to the overall limited completeness, show that these people were horse riding regularly,” Trautmann said in the statement.
One skeleton they looked at was especially intriguing — from a grave dating all the way back to 4300 B.C., in Hungary. Because of its pose and nearby artifacts, the person has long been suspected of being an immigrant from the steppes. The skeleton showed four of the six riding pathologies, suggesting that horse riding was practiced a full millennium earlier than the Yamnaya.
"An isolated case cannot support a firm conclusion, but in Neolithic cemeteries of this era in the steppes, horse remains were occasionally placed in human graves with those of cattle and sheep, and stone maces were carved into the shape of horse heads," said Hartwick College professor David Anthony, a senior co-author of the study and author of "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World," in the statement. "Clearly, we need to apply this method to even older collections.”
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