The origins of horseback riding remain elusive. Scientific studies show that horses were kept for their milk ~3500 to 3000 BCE, widely accepted as indicating domestication. However, this does not confirm them to be ridden. Equipment used by early riders is rarely preserved, and the reliability of equine dental and mandibular pathologies remains contested. However, horsemanship has two interacting components: the horse as mount and the human as rider. Alterations associated with riding in human skeletons therefore possibly provide the best source of information. Here, we report five Yamnaya individuals well-dated to 3021 to 2501 calibrated BCE from kurgans in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, displaying changes in bone morphology and distinct pathologies associated with horseback riding. These are the oldest humans identified as riders so far.
Two different polymer membranes, polyethylene and Nafion, have been sequentially implanted under vacuum at room temperature with 90 keV copper ions up to 1017 ions/cm2; after each implantation step, the targets were subjected to analysis with Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy and coincidence Doppler broadening spectroscopy. Both membranes revealed a similar behavior regarding the high fluence superficial implantation, but with different degree of magnitude. In order to endorse the Positrons annihilation spectroscopy results, scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy‐dispersive energy has been performed on the same targets, despite its lower sensitivity.
The aim of this paper is to present a series of discoveries attributed to the Turkic nomadic populations (11th– 12th centuries), resulting from archaeological research conducted in 2018 and 2019 in several burial mounds placed in the localities of Târgșoru Nou and Inotești from Prahova County, as well as Lunca from Buzău county. It includes descriptions of the investigated archaeological features, the results of the anthropological and archaeozoological determinations as well as those of the physico-chemical investigations of some metal artefacts, and absolute chronology dates. Given that artefacts were part of the archaeological features investigated, we briefly present information regarding their analogies and occurrence. These discoveries highlight a time period which is otherwise scarcely known in this region and at the same time add weight to other materials already published during past years.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.