Painted Wooden Saddle Discovered in an Ancient Tomb in Mongolia Represents Earliest Evidence of Modern Horse Riding

A wooden frame saddle preserved in an ancient tomb in Mongolia could give archaeologists clues to the origins of medieval mounted warfare.

Improvements in Horse Riding

Modern species of horses were first domesticated in Western and Central Asia around 2,000 B.C. Since then, nomads have used them in supporting their mobile lifestyle. During its early periods, equestrianism was essentially bareback.

Armed with bows and arrows, riders gripped the horse with their legs while holding onto the animal's mane. After a few centuries, travelers in the northern steppe invented the bridle and bit. Around 1,000 B.C., horse riders shifted to mounted riding on a soft pad.

Rigid saddles with stirrups used to be an important part of cavalry equipment, and they are considered as a much more recent invention. It has been a mystery as to when these saddles were invented since organic material does not always preserve well in the harsh climate of grassland plains.

Investigating the Innovative Saddle

In 2015, archeologists at the National Museum of Mongolia notified the police that a cave burial at Urd Ulaan Uneet in the western part of the country had been looted. The authorities confiscated several artifacts which include mummified horse remains, wooden archery equipment, and an iron bit. There was also a birch saddle painted red and black with leather straps on either side. They also discovered the bones of a man who was buried wearing sheep- and badger-hide clothing. From these discoveries, the burial site quickly became known as the "cave of the equestrian".

Through DNA testing, researchers confirmed that the human remains were those of a man and that the mummified animal was a male domestic horse. Radiocarbon dating of the remains and the leather stirrup strap from the saddle suggests that the burial and the saddle date back around A.D. 420.

The study raises the possibility that the Eastern Steppe played an important role in the early development and spread of the frame saddle and stirrup. As described by archaeologist William Taylor from the University of Colorado Boulder, developing a rigid frame that can support a suspended stirrup unlocks other things people could do while mounted.

The new data shows that horse cultures of the Eurasian steppe adopted frame saddles and stirrups early, suggesting that Mongolian steppe communities were closely tied to major innovations in equestrianism. This advancement had a major impact on the conduct of medieval warfare.

On the part of the horses, domestication was a hard process. The mummified horse discovered in the Urd Ulaan Uneet burial had bit-related damage to his teeth and changes to nasal bones, like the injuries found in other horse burials in Eastern and Central Asia. Moreover, the Urd Ulaan Uneet horse had nock marks to the ears which might have been used to indicate the owner of the animal during its life.

While the "cave of the equestrian" housed a dead man, horse riding was not limited to the male population. Taylor believes that both men and women could be regularly riding horses since the earliest appearance of these animals in the Eastern Steppe.