Mesopotamian bricks unveil the strength of Earth’s ancient magnetic field

Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving UCL researchers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

 

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BRICK DATES TO THE REIGN OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR II (CA. 604 TO 562 BCE) BASED ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE INSCRIPTION. THIS OBJECT WAS LOOTED FROM ITS ORIGINAL CONTEXT BEFORE BEING ACQUIRED BY THE SLEMANI MUSEUM AND STORED IN THAT MUSEUM WITH AGREEMENT FROM THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE SLEMANI MUSEUM

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CREDIT: SLEMANI MUSEUM

Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describes how changes in the Earth’s magnetic field imprinted on iron oxide grains within ancient clay bricks, and how scientists were able to reconstruct these changes from the names of the kings inscribed on the bricks.

The team hopes that using this “archaeomagnetism,” which looks for signatures of the Earth's magnetic field in archaeological items, will improve the history of Earth’s magnetic field, and can help better date artefacts that they previously couldn’t.

Co-author Professor Mark Altaweel (UCL Institute of Archaeology) said: “We often depend on dating methods such as radiocarbon dates to get a sense of chronology in ancient Mesopotamia. However, some of the most common cultural remains, such as bricks and ceramics, cannot typically be easily dated because they don’t contain organic material. This work now helps create an important dating baseline that allows others to benefit from absolute dating using archaeomagnetism.”

The Earth’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens over time, changes which imprint a distinct signature on hot minerals that are sensitive to the magnetic field. The team analysed the latent magnetic signature in grains of iron oxide minerals embedded in 32 clay bricks originating from archaeological sites throughout Mesopotamia, which now overlaps with modern day Iraq. The strength of the planet’s magnetic field was imprinted upon the minerals when they were first fired by the brickmakers thousands of years ago.

At the time they were made, each brick was inscribed with the name of the reigning king which archaeologists have dated to a range of likely timespans. Together, the imprinted name and the measured magnetic strength of the iron oxide grains offered a historical map of the changes to the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

The researchers were able to confirm the existence of the “Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic Anomaly,” a period when Earth’s magnetic field was unusually strong around modern Iraq between about 1050 to 550 BCE for unclear reasons. Evidence of the anomaly has been detected as far away as China, Bulgaria and the Azores, but data from within the southern part of the Middle East itself had been sparse.

Lead author Professor Matthew Howland of Wichita State University said: “By comparing ancient artefacts to what we know about ancient conditions of the magnetic field, we can estimate the dates of any artifacts that were heated up in ancient times.”

To measure the iron oxide grains, the team carefully chipped tiny fragments from broken faces of the bricks and used a magnetometer to precisely measure the fragments.

By mapping out the changes in Earth’s magnetic field over time, this data also offers archaeologists a new tool to help date some ancient artefacts. The magnetic strength of iron oxide grains embedded within fired items can be measured and then matched up to the known strengths of Earth’s historic magnetic field. The reigns of kings lasted from years to decades, which offers better resolution than radiocarbon dating which only pinpoints an artefact’s date to within a few hundred years.

An additional benefit of the archaeomagnetic dating of the artefacts is it can help historians more precisely pinpoint the reigns of some of the ancient kings that have been somewhat ambiguous. Though the length and order of their reigns is well known, there has been disagreement within the archaeological community about the precise years they took the throne resulting from incomplete historical records. The researchers found that their technique lined up with an understanding of the kings' reigns known to archaeologists as the "Low Chronology".

The team also found that in five of their samples, taken during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II from 604 to 562 BCE, the Earth’s magnetic field seemed to change dramatically over a relatively short period of time, adding evidence to the hypothesis that rapid spikes in intensity are possible.

Co-author Professor Lisa Tauxe of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US) said: “The geomagnetic field is one of the most enigmatic phenomena in earth sciences. The well-dated archaeological remains of the rich Mesopotamian cultures, especially bricks inscribed with names of specific kings, provide an unprecedented opportunity to study changes in the field strength in high time resolution, tracking changes that occurred over several decades or even less.”

The research was carried out with funding from the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

North America’s first people may have arrived by sea ice highway

 

New research suggests some early Americans may have travelled on winter sea ice down the coast from Beringia as long as 24,000 years ago

 One of the hottest debates in archeology is how and when humans first arrived in North America. Archaeologists have traditionally argued that people walked through an ice-free corridor that briefly opened between ice sheets an estimated 13,000 years ago.  

But a growing number of archeological and genetic finds — including human footprints in New Mexico dated to around 23,000 years old — suggests that people made their way onto the continent much earlier. These early Americans likely traveled along the Pacific coastline from Beringia, the land bridge between Asia and North America that emerged during the last glacial maximum when ice sheets bound up large amounts of water causing sea levels to fall.  

Now, in research to be presented Friday, 15 December at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting (AGU23) in San Franciso, paleoclimate reconstructions of the Pacific Northwest hint that sea ice may have been one way for people to move farther south.  

The idea that early Americans may have traveled along the Pacific Coast isn’t new. People were likely south of the massive ice sheets that once covered much of the continent by at least 16,000 years ago. Given that the ice-free corridor wouldn’t be open for thousands of years before these early arrivals, scientists instead proposed that people may have moved along a “kelp highway.” This theory holds that early Americans slowly traveled down into North America in boats, following the bountiful goods found in coastal waters.  

Archeologists have found evidence of coastal settlements in western Canada dating from as early as 14,000 years ago. But in 2020, researchers noted that freshwater from melting glaciers at the time may have created a strong current that would make it difficult for people to travel along the coast. 

Ice highway over dangerous water 

To get a fuller picture of ocean conditions during these crucial windows of human migration, Summer Praetorius of the US Geological Survey and her colleagues looked at climate proxies in ocean sediment from the coast. Most of the data came from tiny, fossilized plankton. The abundance and chemistry of these organisms help reconstruct ocean temperatures, salinity and sea ice cover.  

Praetorious’ presentation is part of a session on the climate history and geology of Beringia and the North Pacific during the Pleistocene, the current ice age, at AGU23. The week-long conference has brought 24,000 experts from across the spectrum of the Earth and space sciences to San Francisco this year and connected 3,000 online attendees.  

Praetorious’ team used climate models and found that ocean currents were more than twice the strength they are today during the height of the last glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago due to glacial winds and lower sea levels. While not impossible, to paddle against, these conditions would have made traveling by boat very difficult, Praetorius said. 

However, the records also showed that much of the area was home to winter sea ice until around 15,000 years ago. As a cold-adapted people, “rather than having to paddle against this horrible glacial current, maybe they were using the sea ice as a platform,” Praetorius said.  

Arctic people today travel along sea ice on dog sleds and snow mobiles. Early Americans may also have used the ‘sea ice highway’ to get around and hunt marine mammals, slowly making their way into North America in the process, Praetorius said. The climate data suggest conditions along the coastal route may have been conducive to migration between 24,500-22,000 years ago and 16,400-14,800 years ago, possibly aided by the presence of winter sea ice.  

While proving that people were using sea ice to travel will be tricky given most of the archeological sites are underwater, the theory provides a new framework for understanding how humans may have arrived in North America without a land bridge or easy ocean travel.  

And the sea ice highway isn’t mutually exclusive with other human migrations further down the line, says Praetorius. The team’s models show , the Alaskan current had calmed down by 14,000 years ago, making it easier for people to travel by boat along the coast.  

“Nothing is off the table,” she said. "We will always be surprised by ancient human ingenuity." 

Were Neanderthals morning people ?

 

A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, finds that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be “early risers,” the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to bed earlier.

All anatomically modern humans trace their origin to Africa around 300 thousand years ago, where environmental factors shaped many of their biological features. Approximately seventy-thousand years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasian humans began to migrate out to Eurasia, where they encountered diverse new environments, including higher latitudes with greater seasonal variation in daylight and temperature.

But other hominins, such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans, had lived in Eurasia for more than 400,000 years. These archaic hominins diverged from modern humans around 700,000 ago, and as a result, our ancestors and archaic hominins evolved under different environmental conditions. This resulted in the accumulation of lineage-specific genetic variation and phenotypes. When humans came to Eurasia, they interbred with the archaic hominins on the continent, and this created the potential for humans to gain genetic variants already adapted to these new environments.

Previous work has demonstrated that much of the archaic hominin ancestry in modern humans was not beneficial and removed by natural selection, but some of the archaic hominin variants remaining in human populations show evidence of adaptation. For example, archaic genetic variants have been associated with differences in hemoglobin levels at higher altitude in Tibetans, immune resistance to new pathogens, levels of skin pigmentation, and fat composition.

Changes in the pattern and level of light exposure have biological and behavioral consequences that can lead to evolutionary adaptations. Scientists have previously explored the evolution of circadian adaptation in insects, plants, and fishes extensively, but it is not well studied in humans. The Eurasian environments where Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for several hundred thousand years are located at higher latitudes with more variable daylight times than the landscape where modern humans evolved before leaving Africa. Thus, the researchers explored whether there was genetic evidence for differences in the circadian clocks of Neanderthals and modern humans.

The researchers defined a set of 246 circadian genes through a combination of literature search and expert knowledge. They found hundreds of genetic variants specific to each lineage with the potential to influence genes involved in the circadian clock. Using artificial intelligence methods, they highlighted 28 circadian genes containing variants with potential to alter splicing in archaic humans and 16 circadian genes likely divergently regulated between present-day humans and archaic hominins. This indicated that there were likely functional differences between in the circadian clocks in archaic hominins and modern humans. Since the ancestors of Eurasian modern humans and Neanderthals interbred, it was thus possible that some humans could have obtained circadian variants from Neanderthals.

To test this, the researchers explored whether introgressed genetic variants—variants that moved from Neanderthals into modern humans—have associations with the preferences of the body for wakefulness and sleep in large cohort of several hundred thousand people from the UK Biobank. They found many introgressed variants with effects on sleep preference, and most strikingly, they found that these variants consistently increase morningness, the propensity to wake up early. This suggests a directional effect on the trait and is consistent with adaptations to high latitude observed in other animals.

Increased morningness in humans is associated with a shortened period of the circadian clock. This is likely beneficial at higher latitudes, because it has been shown to enable faster alignment of sleep/wake with external timing cues. Shortened circadian periods are required for synchronization to the extended summer light periods of high latitudes in fruit flies, and selection for shorter circadian periods has resulted in latitudinal clines of decreasing period with increasing latitude in natural fruit fly populations. Therefore, the bias toward morningness in introgressed variants may indicate selection toward shortened circadian period in the populations living at high latitudes. The propensity to be a morning person could have been evolutionarily beneficial for our ancestors living in higher latitudes in Europe and thus would have been a Neanderthal genetic characteristic worth preserving.

“By combining ancient DNA, large-scale genetic studies in modern humans, and artificial intelligence, we discovered substantial genetic differences in the circadian systems of Neanderthals and modern humans,” said the paper’s lead author, John A. Capra. “Then by analyzing the bits of Neanderthal DNA that remain in modern human genomes we discovered a striking trend: many of them have effects on the control of circadian genes in modern humans and these effects are predominantly in a consistent direction of increasing propensity to be a morning person. This change is consistent with the effects of living at higher latitudes on the circadian clocks of animals and likely enables more rapid alignment of the circadian clock with changing seasonal light patterns. Our next steps include applying these analyses to more diverse modern human populations, exploring the effects of the Neanderthal variants we identified on the circadian clock in model systems, and applying similar analyses to other potentially adaptive traits.”

The paper “Archaic Introgression Shaped Human Circadian Traits” is available (at midnight on December 14, 2023) at: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad203.

Ancient genomics and Indigenous Knowledge reveal history of Coast Salish “woolly dogs"

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

DNA analysis of a 19th-century dog, paired with traditional knowledge acquired through interviews, have together provided new insights into the decline of Coast Salish “woolly dogs” – an extinct Indigenous dog once bred for its unique woolly coat. Dogs were introduced to the Americas at least 15,000 years ago and have been ubiquitous in Indigenous societies across the continents for thousands of years. Coast Salish peoples – a group of Indigenous societies that lived in the Salish Sea region of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) – kept several different types of dogs, including a special lineage of “woolly dogs” which had a thick woolen undercoat that was shorn for weaving blankets and textiles. However, due to increasing settler colonialism, the Coast Salish dog-wool weaving tradition declined throughout the 19th century; the Indigenous population of woolly dogs was lost. As a result, very little is known about these dogs, including their ancestry, the genetic underpinnings of their woolliness, and the factors that led to their ultimate disappearance. To address these questions, Audrey Lin and colleagues performed genomic and isotopic analyses on the only known pelt of an extinct Coast Salish dog, which belonged to a dog named Mutton that died in 1859. By comparing the genome sequence with other pre-Columbian and modern dog breeds, Lin et al. found that Mutton’s mitochondrial DNA was most similar to other pre-European contact lineages. According to the findings, Mutton’s genome showed limited introgression from European colonial dogs and, in general, lacked much genetic diversity, making Mutton the only known example of an Indigenous North American dog with dominant precolonial ancestry postdating the onset of European settlement in the area. Given the ubiquity of European ancestry present in many dog breeds at the time, the findings suggest that the Coast Salish peoples carefully and successfully maintained the genetic integrity of the woolly dog’s genetic lineage for a substantial period after first contact with colonizers. Moreover, the authors identified several candidate genetic variants linked to the dog’s distinctive woolly hair.

 

Working closely with Coast Salish Indigenous groups and incorporating these findings with traditional knowledge and historical records, Lin et al. were able to illustrate the cultural importance of the woolly dog and the drivers underlying their decline and extinction. Drivers included depopulation and forced migration of Indigenous peoples as well as colonial policies designed to disenfranchise and criminalize Coast Salish knowledge and cultural practices, including woolly dog husbandry. “The study from Lin et al. is exemplary for its engagement with local Indigenous communities,” writes Ludovic Orlando in a related Perspective. “Traditional Knowledge keepers were not just consulted for legal approval – a common concern for many studies – but their insights were recorded throughout the process as research material and directly embedded in the main text of the article.”

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adi6549 

Vikings in Sweden suffered from tooth decay

 

Lesions and abrasions on teeth reveal dental problems and attempted treatments

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

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EXAMINATION OF VIKING JAW AND TEETH.

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CREDIT: CAROLINA BERTILSSON, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Vikings in Sweden suffered from painful dental issues and occasionally tried to treat them, according to a study published December 13, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Carolina Bertilsson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and colleagues.

In 2005, excavations in Varnhem, Sweden uncovered the remains of a Christian church, nearby which was a cemetery containing thousands of Viking graves dating to the 10th-12th century AD. In this study, Bertilsson and colleagues performed clinical and radiographical examination of the dentition of individuals from this site. In total, the team analyzed over 2300 teeth from 171 individuals. 

Over 60% of the examined adults had signs of dental caries (tooth decay), most often on the root surface, while none of the juvenile individuals had caries. Other pathologies were also observed, including tooth infection and indications of teeth having been lost before death. Several individuals had caries severe enough to have caused tooth pain, and the authors noted a few cases of tooth abrasion that were likely intentional modifications intended to lessen tooth pain. Some teeth also exhibited abrasions consistent with tooth picking, likely to remove bits of food.

The prevalence of dental caries in this population is similar to what has been noted in other European populations of a similar age, although the authors caution that nearly a quarter of these Varnhem individuals’ teeth appear to have been lost before or after death, and this likely skews these results. For example, the prevalence of caries in this population was observed to decrease with adults’ age, an unexpected result which likely reflects increased tooth loss in older individuals such that the most decayed teeth were not present. Overall, these data provide insights into the lives of Vikings who suffered from and occasionally attempted to treat dental issues, as well as providing details into the pathology of untreated dental issues.

The authors add: “In a Swedish Viking population, around half of the individuals suffered from dental caries. The Vikings performed both tooth filing, tooth picking, and other dental treatment, including attempts to treat dental infections.”

the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295282

Earliest evidence for domestic yak found using both archaeology, ancient DNA

 

 

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XINYI LIU, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

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CREDIT: SEAN GARCIA, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

The high-altitude hero of the Himalayas, yak are among the few large animals that can survive the extremely cold, harsh and oxygen-poor conditions of the Tibetan Plateau. In the mountainous regions of Asia, yak and yak-cattle hybrids serve as vital sources of meat, milk, transportation and fuel. However, little is known about their history: when or where yak were domesticated.

In a study published Dec. 13 in Science Advances, an international team of researchers that includes archaeologists at Washington University in St. Louis report archaeologically and genetically confirmed evidence for domestic yak, dating back 2,500 years, by far the oldest record.

The researchers zeroed in on this date using ancient DNA from a single male yak that lived alongside domestic cattle and yak-cattle hybrids in a settlement known as Bangga, a community in the southern Tibetan Plateau located at an elevation of approximately 3,750 meters (12,300 feet) above sea level.

“Many scholars have speculated that yak was first domesticated in the high-altitude regions of the Tibetan Plateau,” said Xinyi Liu, an associate professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. “It was a well-informed speculation, but up to this point, there hasn’t been robust evidence for that,” Liu said. “This is the first evidence supported by both archaeology and ancient DNA.”

From unknown origins

Once widespread in the Tibetan Plateau, wild yak are now listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only an estimated 7,500 to 10,000 mature individuals left in the wild.

Domesticated yak, however, are prevalent across much of the world. An estimated 14 million to 15 million live in the highlands of Asia alone.

Scientists have previously traced the origins of other domestic bovine species found in Asia. This includes the taurine cattle found primarily in Europe and temperate areas of Asia; indicine cattle, or zebus, found primarily in India and tropical areas of Asia; and water buffalos in East and Southeast Asia. “Yak remains an open inquiry,” Liu said.

“Identifying domestic yak and yak-cattle hybrids at Bangga is not only essential to the understanding of the origin of this charismatic creature, the yak, but also informs us in general about animal domestication pathways, in which gene flow between related stocks is increasingly appreciated,” he said.

A transdisciplinary approach

Bangga is one of the earliest agro-pastoral settlements in the southern Tibetan Plateau and the only site in the region with abundant animal remains to have been systematically excavated in recent decades. This work at Bangga, led by Hongliang Lu from Sichuan University, has provided scientists with a glimpse of daily lives at extremely high elevations between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, contributing excellent momentum around improving our knowledge about the ancient Himalayan region.

The excavations at Bangga also offer a rare opportunity to explore the history of early yak, cattle and their hybrids. For this study, Liu and his fellow archaeologists paired up with livestock geneticists. The team used ancient DNA sequencing as well as zooarchaeological analysis and radiocarbon measurements to help answer questions that could not be resolved with field analysis alone. “Our research at Bangga is a good example of the transdisciplinary and internationally collaborative nature of the 21st century archaeology,” Liu said.

Starting with more than 10,000 pieces of mammal bones collected at Bangga, Zhengwei Zhang, an alumnus of Washington University who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Sichuan University, identified and sorted out 193 specimens belonging to the genus Bos, a group that includes all domestic cattle, zebus and yak, as well as their wild progenitors, aurochs.

The researchers subsequently selected five well-preserved bones from these Bos samples to sequence for whole-genomic ancestry. The sequencing work was led by Ningbo Chen and Chuzhao Lei, two leading geneticists at Northwest A&F University who specialized in Bos domestication.

Genetic analysis revealed that only one of the ancient bones came from a yak, a male individual, while the other four bones were from female taurine cattle. Even figuring out that the cattle were taurine cattle was a surprise, Liu said, as Bangga is located close to the Himalayas and within the range of zebus and Indian aurochs, which were not found at Bangga. Instead, the cattle belonged to the taurine lineage that was introduced to the region from Anatolia via the silk route and northern Tibetan Plateau.

Additional analysis helped clarify that the bone from the male yak was truly a domestic variant, and not just a bone from a wild yak that hunters had killed and brought back to the settlement as food. The researchers also saw evidence for hybridization between the two species.

Bringing yak home

This new discovery of domesticated yak from 2,500 years ago fits into the larger story that is beginning to emerge about how humans adapted to living in a high-altitude environment on the Tibetan Plateau. For example, Liu and his colleagues have previously documented how people in this region grew barley as they faced a challenging environment.

“Bangga provided us with a unique window into lifeways at high elevations 3,000 to 2,000 years ago,” Liu said. “They cultivated barley in an intensive way, provisioned sheep with fodder and water and consumed milk. All these resources were introduced to the Tibetan Plateau from other world regions as part of prehistoric food globalization and had become part of the Tibetan legacy. Now we know they had domestic yak.”

This discovery of the genetically confirmed evidence of domestic yak does not yet solve all questions about yak domestication, nor does it necessarily represent the very beginning of that domestication process. However, it hints at what motivated herders to bring yak home.

Early herders in this region were likely faced with harsh conditions, where animals died out quickly because of prolonged winters and severe snow storms. One would need to be innovative, living in such conditions. A possible solution is intensive corralling, which would have allowed herders to provision their herds with agricultural by-products and water year-round. This strategy is attested by recent zooarchaeological and isotopic work led by Liu and Zhang.

The other solution would be to combine the environmental hardiness of yak with the productivity of cattle. “Dzomo (female hybrid) and dzo (male) are still the most common stocks in the Plateau even today for that reason. Cattle produce more milk and meat, but they are not as good at adapting to the high-altitude environment as yak,” Liu said. “Hybridization allows cattle to move high, and yak to move low at the same time they produce more milk.”

Study co-author Fiona Marshall, professor emerita of Washington University and a world-leading expert on animal domestication, said the study draws attention to the genetic continuity among domestic yak and taurine cattle on the Tibetan Plateau. In many regions of the world, early domesticated animals were replaced by later varieties. The genomic data suggests such faunal turnover did not happen on the Tibetan Plateau.

“This suggests a successful and long-lasting legacy of early Tibetan communities who were cosmopolitan in subsistence strategies and resilient and innovative in facing a challenging climate,” Liu said. “Bangga provides the best example of such a community.”

 

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adi6857 

Archaeologists unearth one of earliest known frame saddles

 

IMAGE: 

SCIENTISTS UNCOVERED A ELEGANTLY CARVED SADDLE MADE FROM SEVERAL PIECES OF BIRCH WOOD FROM AN ANCIENT CAVE IN MONGOLIA.

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CREDIT: WILLIAM TAYLOR/ CU BOULDER

In April 2015, looters sacked an ancient cave burial at a site called Urd Ulaan Uneet high within the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. When police apprehended the criminals, they uncovered, among other artifacts, an elegantly carved saddle made from several pieces of birch wood.

Now, in a new study, researchers from Mongolia collaborating with University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist William Taylor have described the find. The team’s radiocarbon dating pins the artifact to roughly the 4th Century C.E., making it one of the earliest known frame saddles in the world. 

“It was a watershed moment in the technological history of people and horses,” said Taylor, corresponding author of the new study and curator of archaeology at the CU Museum of Natural History.

He and his colleagues, including scientists from 10 countries, published their findings Dec. 12 in the journal Antiquity.

The research reveals the underappreciated role that ancient Mongolians played in the spread of horse riding technology and culture around the globe. Those advances ushered in a new and sometimes brutal era of mounted warfare around the same time as the fall of the Roman Empire. 

The discovery also highlights the deep relationships between human and animals in Mongolia. For millennia, pastoral peoples have traveled between the vast grasslands of the Mongolian Steppe with their horses—which, in the region, tend to be short but sturdy, capable of surviving winter temperatures that can plummet far below freezing. Airag, a lightly alcoholic beverage made from fermented horse milk, remains a popular libation in Mongolia.

“Ultimately, technology emerging from Mongolia has, through a domino effect, ended up shaping the horse culture that we have in America today, especially our traditions of saddlery and stirrups,” Taylor said.

But these insights also come at a time when Mongolia’s horse culture is beginning to disappear, said study lead author Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan. 

“Horses have not only influenced the history of the region but also left a deep mark on the art and worldview of the Nomadic Mongols,” said Bayarsaikhan, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. “However, the age of technology is slowly erasing the culture and use of horses. Instead of herders riding horses, more and more people are riding motorcycles in the plains of Mongolia.”

Mounted combat

Bayarsaikhan was working as a curator at the National Museum of Mongolia when he and his colleagues got the call from police in Hovd Province. The team later excavated the Urd Ulaan Uneet cave and unearthed the mummified remains of a horse, which the group partially described in a 2018 paper.

The saddle itself was made from about six pieces of birch wood held together with wooden nails. It bears traces of red paint with black trim and includes two leather straps that likely once supported stirrups. (The researchers also reported an iron stirrup recently discovered from around the same time period in eastern Mongolia).

The group couldn’t definitively trace back where those materials came from. Birch trees, however, grow commonly in the Mongolian Altai, suggesting that locals had crafted the saddle themselves, not traded for it.

Taylor explained that humans had used pads, a form of proto-saddle, to keep their rear ends comfortable on horseback since the earliest days of mounted riding. Rigid wooden saddles, which were much sturdier, paired with stirrups opened a new range of things that people could do with horses. 

“One thing they very gave rise to was heavy cavalry and high-impact combat on horseback,” Taylor said. “Think of jousting in Medieval Europe.”

Traveling west

In the centuries after the Mongolian saddle was crafted, these types of tools spread rapidly west across Asia and into the early Islamic world. There, cavalry forces became key to conquest and trade across large portions of the Mediterranean region and northern Africa. 

Where it all began, however, is less clear. Archaeologists have typically considered modern-day China the birthplace of the first frame saddles and stirrups—with some finds dating back to the 5th to 6th Century C.E. or even earlier.

The new study, however, complicates that picture, Taylor said. 

“It’s not the only piece of information suggesting that Mongolia might have been either among the very first adopters of these new technologies—or could, in fact, be the place where they were first innovated,” he said.

He suspects that Mongolia’s place in that history may have gone underappreciated for so long in part because of the region’s geography. The population density in the country’s mountainous expanses is low, among the lowest on Earth, making it difficult to encounter and analyze important archaeological finds. 

Bayarsaikhan, for his part, calls for more archaeological research in the nation to better tell the story of horses in Mongolia. 

“Mongolia is one of the few nations that has preserved horse culture from ancient times to the present day,” he said. “But the scientific understanding of the origin of this culture is still incomplete.”

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JOURNAL

Antiquity

DOI