In April 2015, an ancient cave tomb in Urd Ulaan Uneet, located on the Altai Mountain Plateau in western Mongolia, was looted by tomb thieves. When they were arrested, police found various artifacts, including an intricate saddle made of multiple birch shards.
Now, researchers from Mongolia, working with University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist William Taylor, describe the discovery in a new study. The team radiocarbon dated the artifact, placing it at around the 4th century BC, making it one of the earliest known frame saddles in the world.
"This is a watershed moment in the history of human and equine technology," said Taylor, corresponding author of the new study and curator of archeology at the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History.
He and his colleagues, including scientists from 10 countries, recently published their findings in the journal Antiquity.
This study reveals the underappreciated role played by the ancient Mongols in the global spread of horseback riding technology and culture. Along with the decline of the Roman Empire, these advances ushered in a new era of, sometimes brutal, mounted warfare.
The discovery also highlights the deep relationship between Mongolians and animals. For thousands of years, herders on the Mongolian steppes have traveled across the vast grasslands with their horses - horses in the region tend to be short and stocky, able to survive winter temperatures that plunge below freezing. Airag, a light wine made from fermented mare's milk, is still a favorite drink among Mongolians.
"Ultimately, the technology from Mongolia, through a domino effect, shaped American horse culture today, especially our saddle and stirrup traditions," Taylor said.
But these insights also came at a time when Mongolia's horse culture was beginning to disappear, said Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, the study's lead author.
Bayar Saikhan, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said: "Horses not only influenced the history of the region, but also left a deep imprint on the art and worldview of the nomadic Mongolians. However, the technological era is slowly erasing the culture and use of horses. On the Mongolian grasslands, more and more people no longer ride horses, but ride motorcycles."
Bayar Saikhan was working as a curator at the National Museum of Mongolia when he and his colleagues received a call from the police in Hovd Province. The team later excavated the Ulan Unit Cave and unearthed the mummified remains of a horse, which the team partially described in a 2018 paper.
The saddle itself is made from six pieces of birch wood, held together with wooden pegs. There are traces of red paint and black trim on the saddle, and there are two straps on the saddle that likely once held stirrups. (Researchers also report the recent discovery of an iron stirrup from around the same time in eastern Mongolia).
The research team was unable to determine the origin of the material. However, birch trees are common in the Altai region of Mongolia, which suggests that the saddles were made by the locals themselves rather than paid for them.
Taylor explains that from the earliest days of horseback riding, humans have used pads, a kind of primitive saddle, to keep the back of the horse comfortable on their backs. A hard wooden saddle was much stronger, and with stirrups, people could do a lot of things on horseback.
"Heavy cavalry and high-impact fighting on horseback were one of their hallmarks," Taylor said. "Think of the jousts of medieval Europe."
In the centuries after the Mongol saddles were made, such tools spread rapidly westward, across Asia and into the early Islamic world. There, cavalry units became key to the conquest and trade of much of the Mediterranean and northern Africa.
However, the origin of all this is unclear. Archaeologists generally consider modern China to be the birthplace of the earliest frame saddles and stirrups - with some finds dating back to the 5th to 6th century BC or even earlier. This new study makes the situation more complicated.
"This is not the only information that suggests Mongolia may be one of the first countries to adopt these new technologies or, in fact, may be the first to innovate these new technologies," Taylor said.
He suspects that Mongolia's role in this history has long been underappreciated, perhaps in part because of the region's geography. Mongolia is mountainous and has one of the lowest population densities on Earth, making it difficult to access and analyze important archaeological finds.
Bayar Saikhan, for his part, called for more archaeological research in Mongolia to better tell the story of the Mongolian horse. Mongolia is one of the few countries that has preserved horse culture from ancient times to the present. But scientific understanding of the origins of this culture remains incomplete.
Compiled source: ScitechDaily