Earliest traces of horseback riding found in 5,000-year-old human remains

The earliest evidence of horseback riding has been found in 5,000 year old human skeletons from southeastern Europe.

The bones of nine men from graves in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania show signs of riding in the form of wear and tear on their spine, legs and pelvis.

The adoption of horseback riding is considered one of the key events in history as it helped people herd livestock, facilitated trade and migration, and ultimately changed the way war was waged.

“Suddenly people have the ability to move five times faster and carry 10 times more than they could carry before, which is revolutionary,” says Martin Trautmann from the University of Helsinki in Finland.

It has long been assumed that the first people to domesticate horses were pitmen, pastoralists originating from the Eurasian steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. They colonized much of Europe in what some archaeologists consider a bloody rampage.

Traces of horse milk were found in the fragments of their pots. While this shows that people kept horses, they may have done so primarily for milk and meat, so it is not clear when they may have started riding animals.

Trautmann’s team analyzed the remains of 217 human skeletons that had previously been found in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia for signs of wear on the bones that could indicate horseback riding. They date back between 3000 and 7000 years ago. “Bones are living tissue, and if you do certain activities throughout your life, the muscles and ligaments attached to them put pressure on the bones,” says team member Volker Heid of the University of Helsinki.

Several features have previously been suggested as hallmarks of riding, as they are sometimes present in modern people who spend a lot of time on horseback. They include wear on the upper and lower surfaces of the vertebrae caused by the up and down movement of the horse.

Another potential sign is a thicker, rougher area where the thigh muscles meet the thigh bones, indicating heavy use of the thighs, which may be due to the need to grab the horse with the legs. “There is extra bone growth to make the area where the ligament connects to the bone bigger, so the force is better distributed,” says Trautmann.

The team rated all the skeletons for six such features. Five people showed the strongest evidence of riding, with five or more features. Four more skeletons showed four signs. All nine were male, dating from 4,500 to 5,000 years ago.

But William Taylor of the University of Colorado at Boulder says that other evidence of riding, such as remnants of bridles, does not show up in the region’s archaeological record until about 1,000 years later. “This region of the steppes is indeed shown as a homeland, but we have deviated by almost a millennium.”

Wear marks on the bones are not definitive evidence of riding, he said, as they could have been caused by other activities, such as riding in a cattle cart. “We don’t have the data I’d like to see to allow human skeletons to track horseback riding versus other activities.”