Domesticating the Horse

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
>>It indicates that the horse would be an rather unlikely candidate for a
>>dating of PIE unity in the Ukraine later than 4000BC.

In a message dated 2/22/2000 10:20:29 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>-- domestic horse =/= wild horse.

The linguistics seems quite against you here, I think.  No word for 'the wild
horse' in early IE or *PIE as far as I can tell.  To PIEians wild and tame
seemed to be one and the same.  Colin P. Groves suggests that there's very
good evidence that the possibly ancestral wild 'tarpan' of eastern Europe and
possibly even an ancestral wild Equus ferus were still frequently encountered
in Roman times, but those wild horses apparently were given no distinctive
name - except to be called 'wild' horses.  (OED says 'tarpan' is a Khirgiz
Tartar name.)  And of course at the time of first domestication there would
hardly be a reason to distinguish between the two, especially since they were
both used for food.  And if as has been suggested *ekwos is from *ok os,
speedy, no distinction there.  Wild horses are speedy too.  (Cf. early L.
<cicur>, tamed)

I wrote:
>>And of course the evidence to date is that livestock domestication
>>accompanied the rest of agriculture into the Ukraine at 4500BC or earlier.

JoatSimeon at aol.com replied:
>-- but not the domestic horse.  That was not part of the original Near
>Eastern 'package' and the domestic horse is intrusive in the original areas
>of Eurasian agriculture.

But dirt farming and animal domestication enter the Ukraine, care of the
Tripolye (read Renfrew's narrow PIEians), just around 4750BC calibrated
(Dolukanov 1996).  Dereivka, the best-known Sredni Stog settlement (first
dating at 4570BC calibrated) will have evidence of domesticated animals
possibly predating evidence of early true horses fairly early on (by 4400BC?)
 This is no surprise since the most western Sredni Stog settlements are about
a hundred miles from the most eastern remains of Tripolye.

It is not hard to see how Sredni Stog culture might have learned
domestication and livestock breeding from Tripolye and applied it to the
animal it had a wealth of - the horse.  Needless to say, we have evidence of
people eating horses in the middle Ukraine for 7000 years BEFORE Tripolye
enters the scene, but we only have evidence of horse domestication AFTER -
rather soon after - Tripolye enters the scene, clearly carrying the
domestication process and breeding know-how with it.

JoatSimeon at aol.com replied:
>there is no such thing as "domestication technology".  There are only
>animals which have been domesticated.

Ooh, don't tell the biotechnologists that.  As a matter of fact, I believe
Karl Ereky when he coined the word back in 1919 cites animal domestication as
one of the original biotechnologies.  Gordon Childe would also disagree with
you (Man Makes Himself 1936) where he specifically uses 'technology' to apply
to domestication.

Not to quibble about the word 'technology'.  But the statement 'there are
only animals that have been domesticated' couldn't be farther off the mark.  F
ew if any species of thoroughly domesticated animal we know (not even the
cat) have not undergone extensive changes through breeding and in morphology.
 And that is precisely how we can identify domesticated animals in ancient
remains.  If there were domesticated aurochs or domesticated equus ferus, we
have no way of telling them from wild ones in the bone middens.   And our
very best guess is that neither aurochs or tarpans were domesticatible in a
single generation.  Or maybe at all.

So if you object to the term 'technology', that's fine.  But 'domestication'
as a term of art involves more than taming a squirrel or a circus bear.   It
involves well-managed techniques in handling, breeding and husbandry that had
to be developed and learned and transfered across generations.

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
>Do you mean the _idea_ of domestication?

No, that is apparent in the dog.  But cattle and horse breeding are a
different matter.  Nowadays, biotechnologists are talking about expanding the
"biodiversity" of our livestock by gene manipulation, specifically because
ordinary attempts at 'domesticating' certain kinds of wild fowl, e.g., have
been totally unsuccessful.  Domestication is not just an idea, or taming a
single individual animal.  Domestication is a managed change in genotype that
must have taken a lot of work and a lot of nerve (aurochs were much bigger
and meaner than cows).

IN CONCLUSION:  No distinction I know of between wild and domesticated horses
in early IE. (Ready to be corrected.) Domestication of the horse was quite
possibly the result of domestication and breeding know-how coming from the
Danube area about 4500BC.

I stand by my statement:
>>It indicates that the horse would be an rather unlikely candidate for a
>>dating of PIE unity in the Ukraine later than 4000BC.

I may be wrong of course, but that's how the evidence just seems to lean.

Regards,
Steve Long