New archaeological discoveries from Mongolia show that, despite a fragmentary archaeological record, horse cultures of the eastern Eurasian steppe were early adopters of frame saddles and stirrups, by at least the turn of the 5th century CE. The 1,600-year-old saddle discovered at Urd Ulaan Uneet is one of the earliest known examples of a wooden frame saddle, showing evidence of both local production and connections with earlier saddle traditions. Recent discoveries from Khukh Nuur suggest that stirrups were in use on the Mongolian steppe concurrently with their earliest appearance elsewhere in East Asia.
Birch composite frame saddle from Urd Ulaan Uneet, Mongolia (top left) and an artist’s reconstruction. Image credit: P. Lopez Calle.
Mounted riding appears to have been rarely attempted as a regular form of transport until the late second or early first millennium BCE, although some archaeological data suggest that horses could have been ridden as early as the first half of the second millennium BCE in the Eastern European steppes.
Early iconography, textual sources and archaeological finds show that in areas of western Eurasia these first riders often rode essentially bareback, with suspended legs and a simple blanket or soft pad separating rider from horse.
The Greek writer and soldier Xenophon, writing in the 4th century BCE, outlined best practices for cavalry riding and descibed a Greek tradition of riding bareback, gripping the horse only with the upper thighs, allowing the lower legs to dangle, and holding the mane for more security.
Despite their nearly ubiquitous use among modern riders, neither stirrups nor true saddles were apparently used by early equestrians.
The oldest direct evidence for mounted riding of equids comes from 3rd-millennium BCE contexts in Mesopotamia and the Levant, where riders mounted onagers hybridised with donkeys.
By the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, concurrent with the rise of mounted cavalry across Eurasia, soft pad saddles made of leather and stuffed with fur, fibers or other material and secured to the horse via a girth strap were employed across the Eurasian interior.
These early saddles were occasionally reinforced with wooden or horn supports and were sometimes secured to the chest or rear of the horse by a chest strap or crupper.
Across Eurasia, by the start of the 1st century CE, simple saddles were adapted to provide a greater degree of security.
In western Eurasia, Roman military saddles incorporated four large ‘horns’ and handholds to give the mounted soldier greater stability; rigid internal components may have also been included but this is disputed.
Early, semi-structured saddles probably gave greater comfort and security to rider and horse, enabling mounted and armoured soldiers to engage more directly with blunt weaponry and swords.
Such innovations in saddle stability, which allowed riders to sustain collisions and ride while more heavily armed, helped heavy cavalry replace chariots on the battlefield by the end of the 1st millennium BCE across Eurasia.
In East Asia, parallel developments towards structured saddles were also taking place.
Excavations of tombs in Mongolia’s first steppe empire, the Xiongnu (c. 200 BCE-100 CE), have revealed that pad saddles were usually associated with a crupper and/or chest strap to secure the saddle in place, and that rigid pommel/cantle components were also often used.
By the 6th century CE in eastern and central Asia, proto-saddles were replaced by a sophisticated, composite frame saddle paired with two metal stirrups.
“Ultimately, technology emerging from Mongolia has, through a domino effect, ended up shaping the horse culture that we have in America today, especially our traditions of saddlery and stirrups,” said University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist William Taylor.
“But these insights also come at a time when Mongolia’s horse culture is beginning to disappear,” added Dr. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
“Horses have not only influenced the history of the region but also left a deep mark on the art and worldview of the Nomadic Mongols.”
“However, the age of technology is slowly erasing the culture and use of horses. Instead of herders riding horses, more and more people are riding motorcycles in the plains of Mongolia.”
In April 2015, Dr. Bayarsaikhan and his colleagues at the National Museum of Mongolia were notified by police that looters had destroyed a cave burial at Urd Ulaan Uneet in Myangad sum, Khovd province.
The police confiscated several organic objects that had been well preserved in the dry environment of the cave.
An intact wooden saddle was also recovered from the Urd Ulaan Uneet cave.
The saddle was made from about six pieces of birch wood held together with wooden nails.
It bears traces of red paint with black trim and includes two leather straps that likely once supported stirrups.
The archaeologists couldn’t definitively trace back where those materials came from. Birch trees, however, grow commonly in the Mongolian Altai, suggesting that locals had crafted the saddle themselves, not traded for it.
“Humans had used pads, a form of proto-saddle, to keep their rear ends comfortable on horseback since the earliest days of mounted riding,” Dr. Taylor said.
“Rigid wooden saddles, which were much sturdier, paired with stirrups opened a new range of things that people could do with horses.”
“One thing they very gave rise to was heavy cavalry and high-impact combat on horseback. Think of jousting in Medieval Europe.”
“In the centuries after the Mongolian saddle was crafted, these types of tools spread rapidly west across Asia and into the early Islamic world.”
“There, cavalry forces became key to conquest and trade across large portions of the Mediterranean region and northern Africa.”
“Where it all began, however, is less clear. Archaeologists have typically considered modern-day China the birthplace of the first frame saddles and stirrups — with some finds dating back to the 5th to 6th century CE or even earlier.”
“Our study, however, complicates that picture. It’s not the only piece of information suggesting that Mongolia might have been either among the very first adopters of these new technologies — or could, in fact, be the place where they were first innovated.”
“Mongolia’s place in that history may have gone underappreciated for so long in part because of the region’s geography.”
“The population density in the country’s mountainous expanses is low, among the lowest on Earth, making it difficult to encounter and analyze important archaeological finds.”
“Mongolia is one of the few nations that has preserved horse culture from ancient times to the present day,” Dr. Bayarsaikhan said.
“But the scientific understanding of the origin of this culture is still incomplete.”
The team’s findings were published this month in the journal Antiquity.
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Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan et al. The origins of saddles and riding technology in East Asia: discoveries from the Mongolian Altai. Antiquity, published online December 12, 2023; doi: 10.15184/aqy.2023.172
