New Light Shed On Origins Of Mongolias Nomadic Horse Culture
New Light Shed On Origins Of Mongolia’s Nomadic Horse Culture
April 12, 2017
By Eurasia Review
According to new research, nomadic horse culture — famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes — can trace its roots back more than 3,000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia.
The study, published online March 31 in Journal of Archaeological Science, produces scientific estimates of the age of horse bones found from archaeological sites belonging to a culture known as the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex. This culture, named for the beautiful carved standing stones (“deer stones”) and burial mounds (khirigsuurs) it built across the Mongolian Steppe, is linked with some of the oldest evidence for nomadic herding and domestic livestock use in eastern Eurasia. At both deer stones and khirigsuurs, stone mounds containing ritual burials of domestic horses – sometimes numbering in the hundreds or thousands – are found buried around the edge of each monument.
A team of researchers from several academic institutions – including the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Yale University, University of Chicago, the American Center for Mongolian Studies, and the National Museum of Mongolia – used a scientific dating technique known as radiocarbon dating to estimate the spread of domestic horse ritual at deer stones and khirigsuurs.
When an organism dies, an unstable radioactive molecule present in living tissues, known as radiocarbon, begins to decay at a known rate. By measuring the remaining concentration of radiocarbon in organic materials, such as horse bone, archaeologists can estimate how many years ago an animal took its final step. Many previous archaeological projects in Mongolia produced radiocarbon date estimates from horse remains found at these Bronze Age archaeological sites. However, because each of these measurements must be calibrated to account for natural variation in the environment over time, individual dates have large amounts of error and uncertainty, making them difficult to aggregate or interpret in groups.
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http://www.eurasiareview.com/12042017-new-light-shed-on-origins-of-mongolias-nomadic-horse-culture/
