Pastoralists Lost: Pioneer equine and ruminant herders of the Central Asian Steppes and their role in early horse husbandry

迷失的牧民：中亚草原的先锋马和反刍牧民及其在早期马畜牧业中的作用

• 批准号: 528052869
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Cheryl Makarewicz
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Centre for GeoGenetics (aufgelöst)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/528052869?language=en
• 关键词: Pastoralists; Lost; Pioneer; equine; ruminant

The domestication of the horse inspired revolutions in transport, communications and forms of warfare that irrevocably transformed human interactions across the Eurasian continent. Surprisingly, this domestication process emerged independently in more than one geographical region at different timings. Over five thousand years ago, in the grasslands of modern-day Kazakhstan, the Botai Culture emerged as a hotspot of human experimentation with horse husbandry as means to produce food. These first pastoralists specialized exclusively in equine herding for over a thousand years, until dispersals of ruminant domesticates into the steppe stimulated the fusion of horses, caprines, and cattle into a cohesive 'steppe pastoralist package'. At the same time, over 2.500 km to the west in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a completely different lineage of horses were also coming under human control. Selected for traits that enhanced riding and chariot pulling, this lineage eventually gave rise to all our modern domestic horses and rapidly spread across Eurasia, replacing indigenous equine populations and the pastoralist lifeways that accompanied them. Pastoralists Lost investigates early experimentation with animal husbandry in northern and eastern Kazakhstan, a crucible of human innovation in the steppe where horses were first brought under human control. We intensively scrutinize key elements central to pastoralist lifeways but of surprisingly unknown importance in early horse domestication processes: mobility, and the ways in which animals were moved to mutually accommodate the needs of both people and horses. Pastoralists Lost also explores how equine-pastoralists restructured their human-horse relationships with the arrival of cattle, sheep and goats, adopted and created ‘know-how’ in the form of new husbandry practices that impacted all livestock species, and confronted the rapid influx of the new lineage of domestic horses introduced from the west. In doing so, we break ground on a new theoretical paradigm that explicitly foregrounds the role of polycentric and diverse developmental trajectories in the domestication process, a multiplicity of past animal-use systems that fostered cultural and subsistence resilience, and questions the concepts of "success" and "failure" that are currently embedded in our wider understanding of the past. Pastoralists Lost engages cutting-edge archaeological scientific techniques including advanced mass spectrometry, proteomic, and genomic analyses applied to bones, teeth, and ceramics retrieved from archived collections and highly targeted new excavations. This uniquely integrated arsenal of techniques will unlock high-resolution, multi-scalar information on animal mobility and diet, their dispersals and genomic legacies, and how they supplied people with food according to subsistence needs or cultural traditions, while supporting in-depth knowledge transfer to the next generation of Kazakh archaeologists.

马匹的驯化引发了交通、通信和战争形式的革命，这些革命不可逆转地改变了整个欧亚大陆的人类互动。令人惊讶的是，这种驯化过程在不同的时间在不止一个地理区域独立出现。五千多年前，在今天的哈萨克斯坦草原上，博泰文化成为人类试验的热点，将畜牧业作为生产食物的手段。这些第一批牧民专门放牧马匹已有一千多年，直到驯化的反刍动物扩散到草原，刺激了马、山羊和牛的融合，形成了一个有凝聚力的草原牧民套餐。与此同时，在以西2.500多公里的庞蒂克-里海草原上，一种完全不同的马种也受到了人类的控制。这一血统最终产生了我们所有的现代家马，并迅速传播到欧亚大陆，取代了当地的马群和伴随它们的牧民生活方式。Lost牧民研究了哈萨克斯坦北部和东部畜牧业的早期实验，这是人类在草原上创新的熔炉，马匹最初是在这里被人类控制的。我们仔细研究了牧民生活的核心要素，但在早期的马匹驯化过程中，这些要素的重要性出人意料地鲜为人知：机动性，以及动物被移动以相互适应人和马的需求的方式。Lost牧民还探讨了随着牛、绵羊和山羊的到来，马牧民如何重组他们的人马关系，采用并创造了影响所有牲畜物种的新畜牧实践形式的“诀窍”，以及如何应对从西方引进的新的家马谱系的快速涌入。通过这样做，我们开创了一种新的理论范式，明确突出了多中心和多样化的发展轨迹在驯化过程中的作用，以及过去培养文化和生存韧性的多种动物使用系统，并对目前嵌入我们对过去的更广泛理解中的“成功”和“失败”概念提出了质疑。牧民遗失从事尖端考古科学技术，包括先进的质谱学，蛋白质组和基因组分析，应用于骨骼，牙齿和陶瓷，从档案收藏和高度有针对性的新发掘检索。这一独特的集成技术武器库将揭示关于动物流动性和饮食、它们的扩散和基因组遗产以及它们如何根据生存需求或文化传统为人们提供食物的高分辨率、多标度信息，同时支持向下一代哈萨克考古学家进行深入的知识转移。