Excellent research Piotr!
Piotr wrote
> I invite comments on the implications of horse biology for IE
origins.
Modern breeds of horse seem to be hybrids of two subspecies.
The Barb (producing breeds such as the Arabian, the Thoroughbred,
etc) seems to have had a south eastern origin.
The Dun (producing most of the ponies and also working horses eg
Clydesdale, Shire, Percheron etc) seems to have had a north western
origin.
That these two are cospecific suggests that they originally came from
an animal that roamed widely between the two regions. The Lascaux
horse, E.caballus is the obvious candidate. I would suggest that the
two subspecies, dun and barb had separated prior to domestication.
The first horse, probably of the European steppe variety could then
have been back-crossed with the Dun to have produced the species
found in north western Europe; the Arab, and related breeds equally
could have been produced by back crosses to the Barb found towards
the south east.
It has been claimed that the first horses domesticated were too small
to carry a mounted man. They would have been cultivated initially as
a meat animal. Their benefit as a beast of burden would have been
part of the secondary products revolution. No doubt they would have
first been used with a travois, similar to that used later with the
North American Indians. The first carts seem to have been little
more than travois (travoix?) with solid weels added, pulled by oxen
rather than pulled by horses. It was the lightening of the wheels,
with the appearance of spokes and rim that gave the steppe ponies
their head, and saw the rapid sread of chariotry thereafter. There
is no reason, I feel, to doubt that this invention occurred somewhere
on the Pontic steppe. The small size of chariot ponies, when
compared to the Roman cavalry horses, was commented upon by Ceasar in
Gaul and in Britain. The wheeled chariot, I feel led to the rapid
spread of Indo-Aryans to the East and South. The Mitanni and Kassite
aristocrats, with detectable Indo-Aryan affinities probably came from
this expansion.
Crossing these horses with the Barb seems to have occurred in the
Middle East, probably during early pre-Hittite times (2,200-1,900).
Certainly larger horses seem to have spread widely both east and west
after this period, and the horses so lovingly rendered on Egyptian
monuments show a clear admixture of Barb genes. It is quite possible
that the Dun admixtures began at roughly the same time, as horses
penetrated the north western forests.
These crosses seem to have permitted riders to mount their steeds.
In the absence of the stirrup this was a risky business. At first
the preferred posture seems to have been to sit well back on the
horse's rump. This unsafe position limited the sefulness of the
horse as a mount to messagers and postal relays (eg. Egyptian New
Kingdom reliefs show this position). People could be easily
dismounted. It was a little later that the more modern seating
position took over, with the mounted warrior seated forward on the
forward haunches of the horse. This mount position seems to have
spread in the Eastern Mediterranean only after the end of the Late
Bronze Age. Once again it seems possible that this new way of
mounting horses occurred first on the steppe and led to the rapid
spread of the Iranian language groups.
It is interesting that it has been suggested that the Greeks, not
familiar with the forward mounted position (having only been familiar
with chariot ponies), like the later Mexicans at first thought the
mounted warriors from Thrace were some kind of composite animal, half
human half horse (the cantaur).
Thanks Piotr again for an interesting post.
Regards
John