From: tgpedersen
Message: 47387
Date: 2007-02-11
>other
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > You might as well forget of horse riding pastoral nomads. The
> > > line of thinking Tortsen is taking has a better chance ofsucceding.
> > > Agriculture could be responsible for the expansion from the steppesBlah-blah-blah.
> > > not horseback nomadism
> >
> > Agriculture is nor responsible for the spread of the IE-speaking
> > Corded Ware culture into Europe, mr Klekar. It was already in place.
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> If it was not agriculture, it definitely were not mounted warriors
> (please see below). So you got to think of something else.
>
> M. Kelkar
>
>
> "How valid is the hypothesis concerning the formation of nomadism and
> horseback riding in the steppes of the fourth millennium BC?
>
> Undoubtedly, Eneolithic herdsmen had to control the herd and thus they
> might ride a horse (a belt or rope halter is quite sufficient for
> that). But the rider who shoots or fights with a spear needs a
> confident seat that requires, in turn, bridles and cheek-pieces. Bone
> artifacts with one or two holes found at Dereivka were interpreted by
> Telegin as the earliest known cheek-pieces. This became the basis for
> the hypothesis of the early spread of riding in the steppes of Eurasia
> which was accepted by many scientists.
> In reality this hypothesis is based on a misunderstanding. In 1970
> Kozhin published an article in which he proposed that horn objects
> with holes, found at Siberian Afansevo culture sites, which resemble
> Scynthian cheek-pieces to some extent, also served for horseback
> riding. This proposition was rejected by Gryaznov (see 1997, 57,
> figs. 32, 34, & 35), and Kozhin changed his mind. Danilenko & Shmagly
> (1972) and Telegin (1973), however, have interpreted similar objects
> from Dereivka as cheek-pieces and declared the steppe horse-breeders
> to be nomadic riders who undertook distant military raids. Gimbutas
> (1977), who studied in Heidelberg (Germany) under outstanding
> pan-Germanic ideologists (as Hausler (1996) has discovered) gave this
> issue a political character: in her interpretation savage
> warrior-raiders, invading from the east, barbarously destroyed the
> farming culture of Europe and brought Indo-European languages there.
> This hypothesis has already been opposed (Kuzmina 1981; 1983; 1994a,b;
> 1996-97, 1999). Now the interpretation of `cheek-pieces' and
> domestication are under serious criticism (Levine 1990; 1999;
> Rassamakin 1994; 1999; Trifonov & Izbitser 1997). Judging from the
> ethnographic and archaeological data, analyzed artifacts have a wide
> range of formal analogies, from braiding tools (Chernysh 1969) and
> horn mattocks of the Tripolye culture (Rassamakin 1999) to pastoral
> staves (Gryaznov 1999) and implements for undoing knots in China.
> Dietz (1992) has undertaken a study of similar objects in Europe which
> are widespread within different cultures. She determined that that
> they were multi-functional and appear in cultures of different
> economic types-including those without horses. Such objects are
> especially numerous on pile settlements in Switzerland where they
> served for net-braiding. Thus, there are no serious arguments to
> support horseback riding in the steppes. As for horse teeth evidence
> for the use of cheek-pieces (Anthony and Brown 1991), that horse, as
> already stated, does not belong to the Eneolithic (Anthony 1999).
> (Omitted paragraph).
> Horse bones on Eneolithic sites on the Pontic Caspian steppes are
> split which means that the horse was used as a meat animal. There is
> evidence of neither nomadic herding nor distant migration, and we can
> agree with Renfrew (1999, 10) when he says: `the notion of "kurgan
> culture" mounted warriors around 3500 or 3000 BC as responsible for
> carrying Indo-European speech from the steppe lands westward into
> Central Europe should be definitively abandoned (Kuzmina 2003, pp.
> 213-214)."
> Kuzmina, Elena E. (2003), "Origins of Pastoralism in the Eurasian
> Steppes," in Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse, Marsha
> Levine, Colin Renfrew, and Kati Boyle (Eds.), pp. 203-232, Cambridge,
> UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
> "These data are believed to confirm the hypothesis that Yamnaya groups
> migrated only within small local grassland areas. The absence of
> large permanent settlements seems to indicate that such migrations,
> even within such regions, were undertaken on a regular basis. No
> direct evidence is available of large-scale migrations of Yamnaya
> groups (Shishlina 2003, p. 360)."
> "Therefore, I (Shishlina) suggest that, during the Yamnaya culture
> period, horses played only a minimal role in the pastoral exploitation
> of the Eurasian steppe. Herders could use them as draught animals and
> for riding. Long-distance migrations were unnecessary. Pastoral
> routes were small. In this economic cycle, the horse played a key
> role among other domesticated animals, because it could be used to
> break snow cover (Shishlina 2003, p. 362)."
> "Thus, I (Shishlina) am in agreement with Levine: at present we do
> not have any archaeological evidence to prove the existence of warrior
> horse-raiders from the fourth and the first millennium BC (Levine
> 1999). Furthermore, I am in agreement with Rassamkin that `we cannot
> interpret the Early Eneolithic as a period of nomadic horse-riding, or
> even of developed pastoralism (Rassamakin 1999, 139), (Shishlina 2003,
> p. 363)."
> Shishlina, Natalia I. (2003), "Yamnaya Culture Pastoral Explotation:
> a Local Sequence," in Prehistoric Steppe Adaptation and the Horse,
> Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew, and Kati Boyle (Eds.), pp. 353-365,
> Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
>