AN IMPORTED COPPER DAGGER IN KAZAKHSTAN
SUGGESTS THE DOMESTICATION OF THE HORSE IN UKRAINE
Dear Science Editor,
The detailed article by Alan K. Outram et al. in Science 323:
1332-1335, March 6, 2009, on The Earliest Horse Harnessing and
Milking laudably demonstrates presence of equine mare milk fat
residues in five ceramic fragments from the Botai Culture in
northern Kazakhstan near the Ob River about 3500 BC. However,
this does not prove that Kazakhstan was the site of the earliest
domestication of the horse. The single copper dagger found in the
horse-hunting and horse-eating, neolithic Botai settlement, in
conjunction with the five out of fifteen mandibles with dental
bit damage (one of which was dated to 3521 to 3363 BC) and the
sparse mare's milk residues, indicates only that non-meat
utilization of the horse was starting to spread east to
Kazakhstan from Ukraine about 3500 BC.
The copper dagger must have been brought there by a mounted
Proto-Ukrainian from Ukraine or from the more distant Balkans via
Ukraine. No ore could have been smelted in the tree-less steppe
of Kazakhstan, absent the best charcoal from beech (or oak) trees
abundant in the Ukrainian province of Bukovyna (literally beech
country, from buk meaning beech, giving rise to the word book
from the early beech-tablets used for writing).
The domestication of larger animals is not such a great feat of
human intellect as it is assumed. In four months I domesticated a
female deer with some patience, savvy and dry bread. Next year
there were two of them, later on four, and then five. I could
easily have corralled them and milked them while they ate from my
assistant's hand, as was photographed. However, without a long
and selective breeding program I would not be able to rent them
to Santa Claus to pull his sleigh.
The domestication of the horse in Ukraine rather than in
Kazakhstan is suggested by the domestication of multiple animals
in Ukraine, and no others by Central Asians. Ukraine's Trypillian
Culture, lasting from about 5500 to 2500 BC, indisputably
invented the plow and wagon and domesticated the ox. This was a
peaceful, literate (with semiotic and knot writing) and mainly
agrarian civilization which built the first cities. It was at
first augmented by hitching the horse to a wagon for agricultural
and trade purposes. It later crumbled when the horse was hitched
to a chariot and/or mounted, creating a new, rapid means of
transportation and warfare.
That it was Proto-Ukrainians who invented the mechanical use of
the horse and thereby spread far eastward into Asia, ending up in
Western China, is obvious from their blond and red-headed
(non-Oriental) appearance, as in the murals and Tarim Basin
mummies of the Tocharians, as well as in the frozen kurgan
burials in Kazakhstan. Through contacts with the Tocharians, the
Chinese began acquiring the horse between 2000 and 1500 BC.
Notwithstanding the impressive Botai findings, the concept still
stands of equine domestication in Ukraine by descendants of its
Ice Age Hunters. Interestingly, Proto-Ukrainians were the first
to propel man on wheels on Earth, while a modern Ukrainian,
Sergei Korolov who after being drafted from the Gulag became the
father of the Soviet Sputnik, was the first to propel man into
Space.
Very truly yours,
Myroslaw J. Dragan, M.D.
Vice President, Polish Historical Society
Stamford, CT, USA
Telephone & fax 203-357-7530
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