Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:40:37.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The origins of horseback riding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

David W. Anthony  and
Dorcas R. Brown
David W. Anthony
Affiliation:
Hartwick College, Oneonta NY 13820, USA
Dorcas R. Brown
Affiliation:
Hartwick College, Oneonta NY 13820, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The horse is ridden by means of the bit, and the bit leaves its trace on the horse's teeth. The beginnings of horse-riding are here identified by defining and detecting microscopic bit wear on equid teeth, using comparative samples from 4 countries and 25,000 years of prehistory. Scanning electron microscope analysis demonstrates that bit wear is clearly distinguishable from other tooth damage. It first occurs in the Ukraine, USSR, at about 4000 BC. Soon thereafter, mobility became a cultural advantage that transformed Eurasian societies. Riding now appears to be the first major innovation in land transport, pre-dating the wheel.

Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 65 , Issue 246 , March 1991 , pp. 22 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, D.W. 1985. The social and economic implications of the domestication of the horse Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (PA).Google Scholar
Anthony, D.W. 1986. The ‘Kurgan culture’, Indo-European origins, and the domestication of the horse: a reconsideration, Current Anthropology 27(4): 291–313.Google Scholar
Anthony, D.W. 1990. Migration in archaeology: the baby and the bathwater, American Anthropologist 92(4): 23–42.Google Scholar
Anthony, D.W. In press. The domestication of the horse, in Meadow, R.H. & Uerpmann, H.-P. (ed.), Equids in the Ancient World II. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.Google Scholar
Anthony, D.W. & Brown, D.R.. 1989. Looking a gift horse in the mouth: identification of the earliest bitted equids and the microscopic analyssis of bit wear, in Crabtree, P., Campana, D. & Ryan, K. (ed.), Early animal domestication and its cultural context: 98–116. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania. MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology special volume 6.Google Scholar
Bibikov, S.N. 1953. Rannetripol’skoe Poselenie Luka—Vrublevetskaya Na Dnestre, Materialy i Issledovania Arkheologii 38: 1–410.Google Scholar
Bibikova, V.I. 1967. K izucheniiu drevneishikh domashnikh loshadei vostochnoi evropy, Biuleten Moskovskogo Obshchestva Ispytatelei Prirodi Otdel Biologii 72(3): 106–17.Google Scholar
Bökönyi, S. 1974. K Izucheniiu Drevneishikh Domashnikh Loshadei Vostochnoi Evropy[History of domestic mammals in central and eastern Europe.] Budapest: Akademiai Kaido.Google Scholar
Bökönyi, S. 1988. Von Kupferzeitlichen Schafen und Pferden, in Macht, Herrschaft und Gold: 131–44. Saarbrücken: Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G. 1926. The Aryans: a study of Indo-European origins. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.Google Scholar
Clark, G. 1941. Horses and battle-axes, Antiquity 15: 50–70.Google Scholar
Clayton, H.M. 1985. A fluoroscopic study of the position and action of different bits in the horse’s mouth, Equine Veterinary Science 5(2): 68–77.Google Scholar
Clayton, H.M. & Lee, R.. 1984. A fluoroscopic study of the position and action of the jointed snaffle bit in the horse’s mouth, Equine Veterinary Science 4(5): 193–6.10.1016/S0737-0806(84)80141-0Google Scholar
Clutton-Brock., J. 1974. The Buhen horse, Journal of Archaeological Science 1: 89–100.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1970. Proto-Indo-European culture: the Kurgan culture during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC, in Cardona, V., Hoenigswald, H.M. & Senn, A. (ed.), Indo-European and the Jndo-Europeans: 155–97. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, M. 1977. The first wave of Eurasian steppe pastoralists into Copper Age Europe, Journal of Indo-European Studies 5(4): 277–337.Google Scholar
Hancar, F. 1956. Das Pferd in prähistorischer und früher historischer Zeit. Vienna: Vienna Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte.Google Scholar
Klein, J., Lerman, J.C., Damon, P.E. & Ralph, E.K.. 1982. Calibration of radiocarbon dates: tables based on the consensus data of the workshop on calibrating the radiocarbon time scale, Radiocarbon 24(2): 103–50.Google Scholar
Kuzmina, E.E. 1974. Kolesnyi Transport: Problema Etnicheskoi i Sotsial’noi Istorii Drevnogo Naseleniia Iuznorussikh Stepei, Vestnik Drevnei Istorii 4: 68–87.Google Scholar
Levine, M.A. 1983. Mortality models and the interpretation of horse population structure, in Bailey, G. (ed.), Hunter-gatherer economy in prehistory: 23–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levine, M.A. 1990. Dereivka and the problem of horse domestication, Antiquity 64: 727–40.Google Scholar
Lichardus, J. 1980. Zur Funktion der Geweihspitzen des typus Ostorf: Verberlegungen zu einer vor-bronzezeitlichen Pferdeschirrung, Germania 58: 1–24.Google Scholar
Littauer, M.A. 1969. Bits and pieces, Antiquity 43: 289–300.Google Scholar
Littauer, M.A. & Crouwel, J.H.. 1979. Wheeled vehicles and ridden animals in the Ancient Near East. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
Mallory, J. 1981. The ritual treatment of the horse in the early Kurgan tradition, Journal of Indo-European Studies 9: 205–26.Google Scholar
Matiushin, G. 1986. The Mesolithic and Neolithic in the southern Urals and central Asia, in Zvelebil, M. (ed.), Hunters in transition: Mesolithic societies of temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Melente’ev, A.N. 1975. Pamiatniki Seroglazovskoi Kul’tury, Kratkie Soobshcheniia Institut Arkheologii 141: 112–17.Google Scholar
Nesterov, S.P. 1990. Kon v KuJ’takh Tiurkoyazychnykh Piemen Tsentral’noi Azii v Epokhu Srednevekov’ia. Novosibirsk: Nauka.Google Scholar
Nobis, G. 1971. Vom Wildpferd zum Hauspferd. Koln: Bohlau Verlag. Fundamenta Reihe B, Band 6.Google Scholar
Olsen, S.L. (ed.). 1988. Scanning electron microscopy in archaeology. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International series 452.Google Scholar
Payne, S. In press. The KY Tumulus equids, in Kohler, E.L. (ed.), Gordion II, the lesser tumuli: part 1, the inhumations. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Petrenko, A.G. 1984. Drevnee i Srednevekovoe Zhivotnovodstvo Srednogo Povolzhia I Predural’ia [Ancient and medieval stockbreeding on the middle Volga and western Urals]. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk.Google Scholar
Piggott, S. 1962. Heads and hoofs, Antiquity 36: 110–18.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1978. The anatomy of innovation, in Green, D., Haselgrove, C. & Spriggs, M. (ed.), Social organisation and settlement: 89–117. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International series 47.Google Scholar
Rose., J.J. 1983. A replication technique for Scanning Electron Microscopy: applications for anthropologists, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 62: 255–61.Google Scholar
Schrader, O. 1890. Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples. New York (NY): Schribner & Welford.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A.G. 1986. Wool, wheels, and ploughmarks: local developments or outside introductions in Neolithic Europe?, London Institute of Archaeology Bulletin 23: 1–15.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A.G. 1983. The secondary exploitation of animals in the Old World, World Archaeology 15: 90–104.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A.G. 1987. Drinking and driving: Bronze Age status symbols. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Shilov, V.P. 1989. The origins of migration and animal husbandry in the steppes of Eastern Europe, in Clutton-Brock, J. (ed.). The walking larder: patterns of domestication, pastoralism, and predation: 119–25. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Teaford, M. 1988. A review of dental microwear and diet in modern mammals. Scanning Microscopy 2(2): 1149–66.Google Scholar
Telegin, D.Y. 1973. Seredno-Stogivska Kul’tura Epokhi Midi [The Sredni Stog culture of the Copper Age]. Kiev: Naukova Dumka.Google Scholar
Telegin, D.Y. 1986. Dereivka: a settlement and cemetery of Copper Age horse keepers on the Middle Dnieper. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International series 287.Google Scholar
Vasiliev, I.B. 1981. Eneolit Povolzhia [The Eneolithic on the Volga]. Kuibyshev: Pedagogicheski Institut.Google Scholar
Vasiliev, I.B. & Matveeva, G.I.. 1979. Mogil’nik U s. S’ezhee Na r. Samare, Sovietskaya Arkheologiia (4): 147–66.Google Scholar