According to a news release from the ongoing Geological Society of America meetings in Philadelphia, a research team from the Carnegie Museum led by archaeologist Sandra L. Olsen today is reporting evidence for horse corrals at the Chalcolithic Botai culture site of Krasnyi Yar, Kazakhstan, and if they're right, this is evidence for very early horse domestication indeed. Krasnyi Yar (also spelled Krasny Yar) is one of three Botai culture sites in what is now Kazahkstan (the others are Botai and Vasilkovka), and at 5600 years bp, the sites have been associated with early evidence for horse riding, although the precise level of domestication there has been under some debate for some time. Investigations reported at the GSA meetings include the identification of some 54 pithouses, identified using a variety of geophysical prospection techniques. Also discovered were dozens of postmolds outside the pithouses where vertical posts had been planted, some of these arranged in circles. Investigations of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium concentration levels in the interiors of the circles identified a level 10 times what was found outside the settlement. High phosphorous levels are associated with manure, leading researchers to believe that these circular patterns of postmolds represent horse corrals.
Previously, the archaeological site of Dereivka in the Ukraine was considered the oldest occupation with evidence for horse domestication, dated circa 3380-4570 BC years ago. However, Dereivka has been recently redated to the 6th and 7th century BC Scythian culture (something I admit I wasn't aware of until just now), and it seems apparent that Krasnyi Yar now holds that title.
- Geochemical Evidence of Possible Horse Domestication at the Copper Age Botai Settlement of Krasnyi Yar, Kazhakstan, abstract from the GSA meetings
- The Horse in Prehistory, from Sandra Olsen at the Carnegie Museum
- New evidence of early horse domestication, news release
- Geophysical Investigations at Krasnyi Yar, from Archaeo-Physics LLD
- Domestication, Breed Diversification, and Early History of the Horse, from Marsha Levine
- Botai and Horse Domestication, from Dienekes' Anthropology Blog
Comments
Dereivka has NOT been redated to the Scythian period; only the much-touted Cult Stallion has been redated as an intrusive burial in the and it dates from the Scythian Iron Age, but the rest of the site with its huge numbers of horse bones dates to the Chalcolithic at 4570-4150 BCE (UCLA 1466), 4460-4000 BCE (Kiev 466) and 4340-3810 BCE (Kiev 465) by radiocarbon which accords with the stratigraphic analogies to Cucuteni-Tripolye Pottery found at the site. The question is whether the Dereivka and Botai horses were wild or domesticated. Sandra Olsen observes at Botai large deposits of dung and wisely interprets these as evidence that the horses were penned (and therefore in some sense domesticated); Marsha Levine doubts that either the Botai or Dereivka horses were domesticated and insists that they were wild, but who in his (or her) right mind, would drag even one dead horse (let alone the numbers recorded at these sites) back home? These are settlement sites, and if the horses were slaughtered there, I can’t see any way around the assumption that they were domesticated because the idea of stampeding wild horses into your living quarters beggars the imagination and carrying anything as massive as a horse carcase back for butchering requires far more muscle power and far less brain power than I am willing to attribute to Chalcolithic humans.
Hey, Martin:
Do you have a reference for this? I’d like to see this debate fleshed out some more!
Thanks,
Kris