Why Did Ancient Humans Start Riding Horses?

Bronze Age bones suggest that humans hopped on horses a thousand years earlier than previously believed.

By Bridget Alex
Dec 25, 2023 3:00 PMDec 27, 2023 3:22 PM
Malomirovo 1
Burial mounds, also known as kurgans, are some of the only structures that survive from the Yamnaya people. This mound, excavated in 2021 in Malomirovo, Bulgaria, contained the remains of a 65- to 75-year-old man who probably rode horses regularly. (Credit: Piotr Włodarczak, Cracow, Poland)

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Roughly 4,000 years ago, where the Romanian Plains border the Carpathian Mountains, mourners tucked a 30-something man into a tomb. Adorned with red pigment and faced toward the west, his body was buried in the typical fashion of the Yamnaya: within a sprawling mound of dirt.

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