Scythian horse breeding unveiled: Lessons for animal domestication

Date: April 27, 2017

Source: Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen

Nomad Scythian herders roamed vast areas spanning the Central Asian steppes during the Iron Age, approximately from the 9th to the 1st century BCE (Before Common Era). These livestock pastoralists, who lived on wagons covered by tents, left their mark in the history of warfare for their exceptional equestrian skills. They were among the first to master mounted riding and to make use of composite bows while riding. A new study published in Science led by Professor Ludovic Orlando and involving 33 international researchers from 16 universities, now reveals the suite of traits that Scythian breeders selected to engineer the type of horse that best fit their purpose.

The study took advantage of exceptionally preserved horse remains in royal Scythian burials, such as the site of Arzhan, Tuva Republic, where over 200 horses have been excavated but also at Berel', Kazakhstan, where no less than 13 horses were preserved in a single, permafrozen funerary chamber. Applying the latest methods in ancient DNA research, the researchers could sequence the genome of 13 Scythian stallions. These were 2,300-2,700 years old and included 11 specimens from Berel' and two from Arzhan. The researchers also sequenced the genome of one 4,100 year-old mare from Chelyabinsk, Russia, belonging to the earlier Sintashta culture, which developed the first two-wheeled chariots drawn by horses.

The DNA variation observed at key genes revealed a large diversity of coat coloration patterns within Scythian horses, including bay, black, chestnut, cream and spotted animals. Scythian horses did not carry the mutation responsible for alternate gaits, and as a consequence, were not natural amblers. However, some but not all individuals carried variants associated with short-distance sprint performance in present-day racing horses. This indicates that Scythian breeders valued animals showing diverse endurance and speed potential.

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Burial With Turtles – An Unusual Iron Age Interment – via Herp Digest

Posted By: David DMar, 2/28/2016 NewHistorian.com

An archaeological site in the southeastern region of Turkey dating back to the Iron Age has yielded surprising results – a human grave adorned with several turtles.

The site, located on the south bank of the Tigris River just a stone’s throw from the town of Bismil, is known as Kavusan Höyük. The multi-period site has yielded treasures in the past dating from as early as the third millennium BCE to the Middle Ages, but the Iron Age grave site – dated to around 2,500 years old – is unique for the inclusion of a number of Euphrates softshell turtles that seem to have been butchered specifically for inclusion with the two sets of remains found alongside.

Laid to rest within the grave among the turtles were, judging from preliminary study of their skeletons, a middle-aged woman of anywhere between 45 and 55 years of age and a child, 6 to 7 years old, of undetermined sex. The woman had been interred first followed very shortly thereafter by the child, based on the lack of any disturbance of the former’s remains; the latter, which was posed with its left leg bent and its left arm stretched up across its shoulder to shield its face, is thought to have been a female based on the an broken Iron Age brooch known as a fibula that had been buried with the child as a grave good.

With a woman and child buried together in the same grave, it may be natural to assume some sort of kinship between them – possibly even mother and daughter. However, the pair of remains has yet to be subjected to DNA analysis, making it impossible to make any sort of determination as yet. Neither set of remains bore any evidence of suffering fatal trauma.

The remains of more than 20 turtles were found to have been positioned in a ring around the edge of the burial pit. Additionally, the shells of two turtles, plus a number of bones, were found to have been scattered in the center of the gravesite; one of central turtle shells was from a spur-thighed tortoise. Additionally, three of the turtles were found to have been Middle Eastern terrapins, a common species to find in eastern Turkey; the remaining 17 were the Euphrates turtles, a species noted as being highly aggressive. Finding both the Middle Eastern terrapins and Euphrates turtles being used as grave goods was called “unprecedented” by the researchers involved in the archaeological site, according to an article appearing in Discovery News.

Euphrates softshell turtles, a carnivorous species that are not above scavenging from carcasses, have been known to feed on the bodies of animals as large as horses adrift in bodies of water. The significance of their use to embellish the gravesite is yet to be discerned.

Iron age horse found as Norway glacier melts

The remains of an iron age horse has been found in a glacier two thousand metres up in the mountains of Norway, one of the first times such an animal has been found at such altitude.

"It shows that they were using horses for transport in the high alpine zone, in areas where we were quite surprised to find them," Lars Pilø, the head of snow archeology at Oppland council told The Local. 

The find, which was made in August, is the latest of a string of discoveries archeologists have been making around the world, as global warming melts glaciers and ice sheets, leaving perfectly preserved relics behind. 

"Even though the finds up there are fantastic, the background to the science is very serious," Pilø said. "Norwegian climate experts tell us that all the ice in the Norwegian high mountains will be gone by the end of this century, and of course that also adds an urgency to the work that we're doing." 

Pilø, who is Danish, and his team have been concentrating their research around the Lendbreen glacier near Lillehammer, which he believes was used both for hunting and as a short cut over the mountains from the late iron-age to the early medieval period. 

"When it gets hot in the summer, the reindeer will get pestered by horseflies, and when they get horseflies they move up to the ice, which made the ice excellent hunting grounds," he explained. 

"The other reason that we have many finds is that people wold also cross the glaciers as a transport route over the mountains. You can imagine, if people went over ten times a year and dropped one thing every time, that adds up to a lot of items." 

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