Listen to part of a lecture in an
anthropology class.
So now that we’ve discussed how people in
ancient societies tamed animals like cows and chickens for food and other uses,
I’d like to talk about an ancient culture that domesticated horses. It’s the
Butai people. The Butai culture thrived over five thousand years ago in central
asia, in what is now known as Cosekston. Pretty much all that we know about the
Butai comes from 3 archeological sites, and we were able to learn that the
Butai built large perennial villages- sometimes with hundreds of homes. We also
found horse bones at these sights, and these can be traced back to the time of
the Butai settlements. The climate that the Butai culture lived in- it was
harsh. And the Butai people- they didn’t really seem to have much on the way of
agriculture going on, so their whole economy was really based on horses. And because horses can withstand the
climate, they can survive ice-storms and they don’t need heated barns. The
Butai people can settle in one place and rely on the horses for food, clothes
and transportation.
S: So the Butai were the first to
domesticate horses?
P:Well, we’re pretty sure horses were first
domesticated a bit earlier- to the north west- in the area where is now Ukraine
and Western Russia. It’s quite possible that some of those people later
migrated east to cause ext---
S: But what exactly tells us that these
Butai people that the horses in their area were really domesticated?
P: As with most ancient history, there is
not much we can be certain about. But we
know there was a significant population of wild horses in that area. So there
were a lot of opportunities for the Butai people to catch horses to
domesticate. We also know that horse milk was an important source of food for
the Butai people. But milking a wild horse?-Well,no. That would be impossible.
To milk a wild horse? And then, there’s a- oh yes Eric?
Eric: So, you said last week that for some
animals like, for dogs, there were physical changes taking place over the
course of generations of dogs because of domestication. So can we tell from
those horse bones that it was sort of the same for horses?
P: Actually, it wasn’t. We know that horses
have not changed a lot physically as a result of domestication. So those
ancient horse bones don’t tell us much about domestication. But we’ve found…we’ve
found what may be pens and cra--s in the
Butai settlements. And, not too long ago, a new approach was used to find out
if the Butai people were keeping horses. Soil samples from these pens and cra—s
show ten times the concentration of phosphorous..
S: Umm..phosphorous?
P:Yes. Phosphorous is a very significant
indicator that horses, large numbers of horses were being kept in those
settlements. You see, a horse manure- a horse waste- is rich in phosphorous and
also nitrogen compared to normal soil, but nitrogen is an unstable element. It
can be washed out when it rains, it can be released to the atmosphere, whereas
phosphorous combines with calcium and iron, and can be preserved in the soil
for thousands of years. The soil from the Butai settlements’ sites were found
to have high concentrations of phosphorous and low nitrogen concentrations,
which is important since it suggest what we’ve got is really old-Not something
added to the soil more recently.
S: Wait, so if horses have been there
recently, there’d still be lots of nitrogen in the soil. That’s right. Yes,
Karen?
Karen: I just read an article. It said that
one way to determine if there was an ancient fireplace at an archeological site
was to check the soil for phosphorous. So couldn’t the phosphorous at the Butai
sites just be from the frequent use of fireplaces?
P: You are absolutely right. However, when
a fireplace leaves behind a lot of phosphorous in the soil, we also usually
find a high concentration of potacium. But the soil in the Butai settlements-
it was found with relatively little potacium, which makes it far more likely
that the phosphorous came from horse, okay? Now, later on, people of the same
region- northern cosecston- started raising sheep and cattle, and that lead to
a more nomadic culture. Since sheep and cattle can’t survive in harsh climates,
they needed to be taken south every winter. Moving around meant working harder,
but the trade off was far richer, fattier milk year round, and warm clothing
from the sheep.
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