Episode 5: The Prehistoric Steppe

We explore the prehistoric Eurasian steppe and assess the changes emerging after the global Ice Age. 

Transcript

Our story begins 13.77 billion years ago, when the first particles emerged out of an incredibly dense point known as the singularity. Wait. No. Uh… our story begins 4.453 billion years ago, when a hot ball of gas and dust coalesced into a single object shaped by gravitational forces. And… Uhm. No, that’s not correct either. Ah okey, our story starts today. On an unspecified point in the year 2021. 

That’s the problem with starting dates. Often, we like to think of history as having strongly defined numbers. The Magna Carta was signed in 1215. American colonists declared independence in 1776. The Soviet Union suddenly collapsed on December 26, 1991. See. Simple dates. And that’s a bit of a problem.

You see, specific dates are tricky. In many cases, they create some sort of hard divide between the things that came before an event and that came after an event. They obfuscate the underground forces that contextualize these events. Indeed, a fascination with dates can result in great misunderstandings that fail to acknowledge the more nebulous factors and the lesser documented peoples that were involved in a particular date and time. Cultural movements, socioeconomic grievances, and technological developments often don’t have fixed dates. They occur in the undercurrent, developing slowly over time. That’s why public education often fails to truly explain historical events, as a fixation on remembering dates and events can cause many to lose track of the broader historical narrative. 

Dates are particularly problematic in the history of the Eurasian steppe. We have many groups with fuzzy origins. This is, of course, because of problems related to historiography. As we mentioned in the previous episode, much of our information about steppe groups comes from outside sources. Oftentimes, writers from other civilizations wrote about these nomads and so we have significantly less sources from the nomads themselves. As such, many of our sources don’t really tell us the true story about when or how a particular group emerged. 

You have Herodotus, who gives a number of mythological explanations for the emergence of the Scythians. He lists several possibilities and when considering which origin may be the most accurate, he merely says: “the nomad Scythians living in Asia were pressed in a war by the Massagetae and crossed the river Araxes into Cimmerian country.” In other words, Herodotus merely says that one day the Scythians emerged on the footsteps of the Hellenistic world. When describing the Xiongnu, the Chinese historian Sima Qian tells us that: “as early as the time of Emperors Yao and Shun… we hear of these people known as Mountain Barbarians… living in the region of the northern barbarians and wandering from place to place pasturing their animals.” Once again, the origins of the Xiongnu seem shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. 

So, when we think about the origins of the Eurasian steppe and its peoples, this is the most important thing to consider. Much of the history we wish to know simply isn’t recorded. We have no documents pertaining to many swathes of steppe history. We are forced to contend with hypotheses, conjectures, and personal theories when assessing these origins. That isn’t to say that we know absolutely nothing. Outside sources are still incredibly valuable, and modern technology has helped us gain interesting data on climate history and genetic information. It is however important to remember that while we may not know specific dates, we can still understand the genesis of the Eurasian steppe.

That’s why today on episode 5 of the Nomads and Empires podcast, we’re going to try and establish a starting ground for the history of this region. Today, we’re going to tackle the murky waters of the Mesolithic and Neolithic. This is a period of substantial change across the world. Although prehistory is marred by a lack of written sources, we have a substantial amount of cultural and archaeological artifacts that hint to us some details about these changing times. We can start to see the emergence of key technologies, like agriculture and animal domestication. Older stone tools will give way to basic metalworking. The times here were changing, and such innovations would impact the world and importantly, the steppes. And so, today, we’re going to dive into the mysterious waters of the era before history. 

So where do we begin? Really, I think the most logical starting point is not in a specific date but rather in the currents of a climate-based event: the aftermath of the Last Glacial Period. During the Ice Age, much of the Eurasian steppes were, actually, still steppe land. Winter monsoons in Mongolia were much more dramatic, and as a result, much of the land from Spain to modern Mongolia were part of what we call the Mammoth steppe. This grassland was very cold and covered in a layer of permafrost. Indeed, we do have evidence of mammoth hunting in this time and region, which is pretty darn cool if you ask me. However, between 11,000 to 10,000 BCE, temperatures across the world began to warm up. The great glaciers and boundless ice of this time began to give way to new environments and ecosystems. Even the steppes began to warm up, though parts of this prehistoric Mammoth steppe may remain to this day in eastern Siberia and Mongolia.

Modern humans in this time began to adapt to these changing conditions, although initially, life still remained consistent with what we saw in the glacial period. Hunter-gatherer societies remained prevalent across the world, and such societies were mostly made up of small bands of individuals who participated in many aspects of food production and communal living. 

It’s not exactly clear when monumental changes began, but around 10,000 years ago, we can start to see the beginnings of something incredibly substantial. This was the Agricultural Revolution, and this single innovation would have major repercussions. Around this time, these small bands of hunter-gatherers were able to establish more permanent residences based around the production of crops. Paleoarchaeologists believe that the first instances of agricultural development emerged in the lands of the modern Middle East, particularly in the areas of the Fertile Crescent and the Levant. In fact, some of the earliest pieces of evidence of proto-agriculture can be found in modern day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. Sites like Ohalo II and Kharaneh IV show a large collection of fruits, grains, and seeds, indicating the possibility of small-scale agriculture. These sites actually predate the Agricultural Revolution by thousands of years, with Ohalo II having an estimated age of 23,000 years. As such, it seems like the Levant already had some history of agriculture and may have influenced developments seen in the aftermath of the Last Glacial Period.

The spread of agriculture would radically alter societal structures that were present in Paleolithic communities. Indeed, the post-Ice Age era is known as the Mesolithic era, to distinguish it from the previous Paleolithic one and the following Neolithic one. The Mesolithic, in contrast, was an era of transience, a period in between other periods. Scholars believe that changes like urbanization, religious structuralization, and complex social hierarchization emerged as a direct result of agriculture. We know that tools became more sophisticated while art became more detailed. One major ramification to this would be a key innovation to our story on the steppes. In some way, agriculture either coincided with or directly influenced the domestication of animals like cattle, sheep, and eventually horses. 

According to scholars like Steven Mithen, a professor of Archaeology focusing on the prehistoric era, goats and sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated, with evidence of this domestication dating to around 8000 BCE. This early instance of animal husbandry can be found in the Fertile Crescent, with scholars specifically pointing to sites in Syria, southern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. The reason for this, according to Mithen, is that sheep and goats are territorial creatures with herd tendencies. At the helm of such social groups is a leading ram or ewe, and as such, Mithens argues that early humans were able to act like these leading animals and thus replace them as surrogate leaders. It seems likely that cows and pigs were domesticated within a few centuries after the domestication of goats and sheep. This meant that humans could feasibly control large herds of animals, which would result in greater food production and the ability to use other resources like leather and wool.

Hunter-gatherer societies slowly began to selectively breed these animals. Sheep and goats were bred to produce more milk, to deliver more offspring, and to provide thicker wool. Indeed, there are some indications showing that regional climates may have impacted such developments. Sometime around 6500 BCE, sheep were introduced in Europe, and in turn, we start to see the development of more modern-looking, wool-producing sheep. At an archaeological site in Khvalynsk, Russia dated to between 4600-4200 BCE, we can find a cemetery where “sheep were the principal animal sacrificed.” At a site in the Hungarian plain dated to 3600-3200 BCE, we can spot sheep that were bred to be larger and to carry more wool. 

It should be to little surprise to us then that the emergence of agriculture and animal domestication would coincide with more complicated social structures. No longer did the entire population participate in hunting or gathering. Instead, some individuals would have specialized in certain aspects of society. Perhaps one consequence of this was the emergence of group leaders that could be identified via material culture. It seems conceivable to consider. As societies began to depend more on herding and farming, the individual who could control the most herds or the most farmland would have the most influence in that given polity. David Anthony, a professor of Anthropology, refers to these leaders as chiefs and describes the growing changes as such:

“An interesting aspect of the spread of animal keeping in the steppes was the concurrent rapid rise of chiefs who wore multiple belts and strings of polished shell beads, bone beads, beaver-tooth and horse-tooth beads, boar tusk pendants, boar-tusk caps, boar-tusk plates sewed to their clothing, pendants of crystal and porphyry, polished stone bracelets, and gleaming copper rings.”

When focusing back onto the steppes, we can find direct evidence of animal domestication quite early on. Scholars argue that before the 5000s BCE, the peoples of the western and central Eurasian steppes were mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers. Diets mainly included fish, nuts, plants, and hunted animals like wild boars and deer. We can find camps and temporary settlements from this era along the basins of the Dnieper and Don rivers. Suddenly, between 5800-5700 BCE, a group of agriculturalists made their way to the outskirts of the steppes. Known as the Crish, these peoples migrated from the Hungarian plains to the eastern edges of the Carpathian mountains. There, these Crish peoples established permanent settlements, perhaps even early villages. Their crops included barley, peas, and wheat, and more importantly to our story, they brought along domesticated animals like pigs, cattle, and sheep.

At the frontiers between the Carpathian Mountains and the Ukrainian steppes were a people known as the Bug-Dniester culture. These individuals were the hunter-gatherers that we had previously mentioned. Across the steppe, most peoples continued to live in hunter-gatherer bands. It seems that the emergence of the Crish people resulted in a cultural exchange between the Bug-Dneister and the Crish. As Professor Anthony surmises, it seems possible that those living in the Pontic steppe were aware of their “richly ornamented and colorfully decorated” neighbors.

Archaeological sites of Bug-Dniester settlements, like that of Soroki 2, contain pottery fragments with clear signs of Crish influence. Other sites like LBK Ratniv-2 show that the Bug-Dniester people even attempted to develop their own agricultural communities, likely on lines similar to that of the Crish. And of course, the Bug-Dniester culture began to domesticate animals like pigs and sheep. And so, we start to see the beginning of our steppe story. The emergence of animal domestication would come to have major ramifications on the peoples living here. 

Despite this adoption of animal domestication in western Ukraine, it did take some time for this innovation to spread onwards. In the 6th millennium BCE, there seems to have been a split between groups that embraced these revolutionary developments and those that remained as hunter-gatherers. In the steppes of Russia and Ukraine, we see an embracement of animal domestication, while by contrast, those living in the Kazakh steppes seem to have continued a lifestyle based on hunting and foraging, with many such individuals residing in camps near rivers and lakes. It may also be that such lifestyles were more fluid than one expected, and I suspect that some communities were perhaps semi-agricultural and semi-nomadic, shifting between the two as conditions warranted. An important reminder is that horse domestication had not occurred yet. If the peoples of the steppe were migratory, they were doing so on foot.

Starting in around 5200 BCE, we enter what is considered the Copper Age. In this time, the Bug-Dniester culture seems to have disappeared, and in its place came the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. More significant is the emergence of copper smithing, a technological innovation that may have emerged in modern Bulgaria sometime between 5200-5000 BCE. Over the next six hundred years, copper production spread across Europe and the Eurasian steppes and we find evidence of this copper use directly in the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. A site dated to between 4800-4600 BCE contained copper products including fish hooks, beads, and a ring. 

As we move further east, we can start to see the slow adoption of both animal domestication and copper working. In the steppes of the northern Caucasus and the Volga region, we can find archaeological sites dated to between 5200-4600 BCE that contain copper goods and domesticated animal remains. In some settlements here, we can specifically find the bones of sheep, goats, and pigs. Scholars and archaeologists do make an important caveat here. As we mentioned, there were clear distinctions between the peoples of the western Ukrainian steppe and those living in the Volga and Kazakh steppes. As such, “it is still unclear whether the communities who erected the earliest mounds in the southern Russian steppe represent the first pastoralists or late hunter-gatherers.”

Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that domestication was starting to emerge throughout the western and central steppes between the 5000s-4000s BCE. While we’ve so far only talked about animals like the sheep and the goat, we haven’t really talked about the animal most iconic to this region: the horse. At this time, we know that horses were hunted by hunter-gatherers, but thus far, we haven’t seen any evidence related to horse domestication or horse riding. This is because horses appear to be some of the last animals to be domesticated. Professor David Anthony believes that horse domestication may have, at the earliest, originated around 4800 BCE. Others place this innovation arising in the late 3000s, and we find indisputable evidence of horse domestication in the 2000s BCE. 

The reason for this later domestication is unclear. Professor Anthony argues that “horses were large, powerful, aggressive animals, more inclined to flee or fight than to carry a human. Riding probably developed only after horses were already familiar as domestic animals that could be controlled.” Why then would the horse be domesticated despite being an animal mostly associated with hunts? Some scholars have argued that transportation may have been one reason, but others have made the astute point that oxen were already domesticated by this period of time and could instead have been used for such a role. Indeed, I personally wonder if horse domestication was just another attempt at finding other food sources. I think we’ll never really know why the horse was domesticated, but the important takeaway is that it happened.

We should now consider how archaeologists and scholars distinguish between artifacts left behind by wild, hunted horses and their domesticated counterparts. Trying to identify differences in bone structure is virtually impossible. Instead, what scholars look at are bits. The bit is a tool used in horse riding to navigate the horse. Riders place the bit in the horse’s mouth and as such, this tool will wear down the teeth and leave a sort of mark. For scholars and researchers, this wear is a sign of horse riding. 

A scholarly consensus has emerged in this front. Many researchers and archaeologists believe that the clearest signs of horse domestication can be found at a site called Botai, a prehistoric settlement in Kazakhstan. We’ll get to the bit about bit marks in a second, but there are a few other indicators that make Botai special. Botai, located near the Ishim River and dated to about 3700-3000 BCE, has a ton of horse skeletons. Hundreds of horses were killed here either for ritualistic purposes, for consumption, or both. The settlement is noted to have tools that may have been used for leather working. We also have evidence of dung collection, animal pits, and large animal slaughter sites.

Importantly, we have significant evidence pointing to bit wear in many horse remains from the site, indicating some form of domestication and possibly even harnessing. Professor David W. Anthony recalls that during his own investigation of Botai, over 12% of his acceptable sample showcased signs of bit wear. Although this research indicates that many horses at Botai were wild, what we can piece together is this picture. Botai may have been a settlement on the steppes with mounted hunters using horses to hunt and capture other horses. Such developments may very well explain why hunting tactics seem to have changed during the period of 3700-3500 BCE, with groups on the steppe now starting to “use herd-driving hunting methods, and… aggregate in large settlements.” Scholars of course don’t believe Botai to be the origin of horse riding, but it appears to be the first clear sign of it, and as such, many researchers have agreed to what we call the Botai consensus.

However, I would caution you from taking this consensus as fact. As always in academia, there are constant debates and new pieces of evidence that can challenge consensus. For instance, some have posited that the Przewalski's horse may be the ancestor of modern horses, or the Equus caballus as they are known scientifically. The Prezewalski’s horse remains the only truly wild horse population and can be found in the Central Asian steppes. Some have argued that the horses of Botai may have derived from this species. Genetic research, however, has indicated otherwise, showing that these two species are remarkably distinct from one another, and that the Prezewalski’s horse has never been domesticated. 

As far as bit wear is concerned, some researchers such as William Taylor and Christina Isabelle Barrón-Ortiz have noted that what was thought to be bit wear may actually have natural origins. Now, I do want to briefly mention that this debate can be quite caustic in the academic community. The work of Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz is very recent, coming out only in April 2021. While this should highlight the prowess of academic research and how fluid it is and how it is always changing and how we’re always learning new things, what has also come out of this article is a fierce and almost toxic response. While some scholars have responded to their work in good faith and with scientific debate in mind, I’m afraid to say that others have decided to engage with personal attacks and even threats. While this isn’t really related to our narrative, I wanted to mention this to highlight the ever-changing nature of academic research and perhaps as a warning about the more toxic realities within it.

Anyway, what we should understand is that horse domestication seems to have likely emerged in the 4th millennium BCE and we have definitive evidence for horse riding by the 2000s BCE. Whether it originated in Botai, on the Pontic Steppe, or elsewhere on the western steppes, we can safely say that this single innovation would forever change the face of world history. I must admit that the development of the iconic compound bow will come much later, but don’t worry. We’ll get to that soon. 

Instead, let’s now shift our focus away from domestication and back towards us, humans. You see, in the wake of these developments, a cultural-linguistic group was beginning to emerge and ready to embrace the horse and ride across the steppes. I am of course talking about the proto-Indo Europeans. 

Trying to trace the origins of the proto-Indo Europeans, like any hypothesized linguistic group, is a difficult undertaking. I’m not even sure if we can call the proto-Indo Europeans as a specific and singular culture of sorts. They are, as I’ve mentioned, a mostly hypothetical group based on linguistic and archaeological evidence. What we do know is that the proto-Indo Europeans probably descended culturally and even genetically from some of the groups we talked about today. These proto-Indo-Europeans in turn would give rise to a number of descendants who fanned out across Eurasia. Some of these migrated over to Greece, others to Iran, some to India, and onwards and onwards. The most remote of these migrations could be found in Europe and in the Tarim Basin. And yet, there were those descendents who remained on the Eurasian steppes, and it would be these descendants who would dominate the wild grasses for generations to come.

Professor David W. Anthony gives us this passage describing the proto-Indo Europeans. “The speakers of Proto-Indo-European were tribal farmers who cultivated grain, herded cattle and sheep, collected honey from honeybees, drove wagons, made wool or felt textiles, plowed fields at least occasionally or knew people who did, sacrificed sheep, cattle, and horses to a troublesome array of sky gods, and fully expected the gods to reciprocate the favor. These traits guide us to a specific kind of material culture-one with wagons, domesticated sheep and cattle, cultivated grains, and sacrificial deposits with bones of sheep, cattle, and horses.” After analyzing various possible places of origin, Professor Anthony tells us that the proto-Indo Europeans likely came from the steppes of the Pontic region, the area north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Such peoples were likely prevalent during the years of 4000-3000 BCE, with some possible extensions positing a duration between 4500-2500 BCE.

It is, as I said, these peoples who would ultimately give rise to new cultures across Eurasia. The influence of these proto-Indo Europeans would be felt in Europe, in Anatolia, in India, in Persia, and in Central Asia. Their innovations would flow eastward, influencing the many prehistoric cultures of Mongolia and the eastern steppe. In time, these proto-Indo Europeans would give birth to groups that we’ll come to know well: the Scythians, the Sakas, the Sogdians. However, the full story of these proto-Indo Europeans, these heirs to the powers of domestication, will have to come later in the next episode. 

Instead, I want to end this episode by considering what we’ve discussed so far. The history of prehistory is hard to grasp fully. There are a lot of murky waters and misty clouds that emerge because of the lack of written sources. We are forced to contend with patterns and trends based on archaeological records. Such findings can explain to us commonalities that we group into cultural groups, but we can never be fully certain as how solid these identities were nor can we really understand the flow of technology and innovation. In this episode, we tried to examine the possible trajectory of developments like agriculture, settled society, and horse domestication, but as we also noted, this is an area of research that is ongoing, always changing, and never fixed on permanent statements. Whatever the case may be, this foundational period of history would lay the groundwork for the practices of many steppe groups. The domestication of the horse would prove pivotal, especially when tied with later innovations like that of the bow. 

In the next episode, we’ll take a deep dive into the world of the proto-Indo Europeans and analyze their various migrations. We’ll assess their offspring and their effects on neighboring prehistoric groups. Then, we should have a pretty solid foundation for when we finally dig into the realms of our first identifiable nomadic societies. 

Until then, thank you so much for listening! There’s a few things I want to say here at the end. First, I want to make a correction on something I said in a previous episode. In episode 3, at about 23 minutes in, I said that the Volga River flowed into the Black Sea. That is incorrect, as the Volga actually flows into the Caspian Sea. It’s a silly mistake on my part, but it leads me to this point. Please contact me with any questions and corrections you may have! I’m learning a lot while working on this podcast, and I will inevitably slip up. I want my information to be accurate, so please let me know if I messed up or said something wrong.  

As such, you can find me at Twitter at the handle @NomadEmpiresPod or you can reach out to my email nomadsandempires@gmail.com. And that’s pretty much all of it. Thank you again for listening, and see you next time on the windy plains of the steppe.