Documentary, First Horse Warriors 2019 NOVA PBS-steppes pastoralists
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00:00Horses. Powerful, graceful, and thunderously fast.
00:12No animal has made a greater impact on society or given humans more freedom and mobility than horses.
00:21The thrill that people still get today from riding a horse at top speed, there's nothing like it.
00:28Whereas if you get on the back of a cow, it's not that great an experience.
00:35Centuries before Egyptians built the pyramids, Eurasian nomads unlocked the power of horses and used them to reign supreme over vast territories of the ancient world.
00:51But how did they do it?
00:53Follow anthropologist Niobe Thompson as he visits the last of today's horse riding cultures and explores archaeological sites and genetics labs, seeking to unlock the mysteries of the world's first riders.
01:14The horse transformed what it means being human. It gave the possibility to explore the world in a way that had never been possible before.
01:26But horses could also bring terror at the hands of brutal raiders and even pandemic disease.
01:36Time traveled back to when prehistoric people began capturing wild horses and rode them like a tide that would forever change the course of human history.
01:51of human history.
01:56First Horse Warriors, right now on NOVA.
02:04Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following.
02:08Horses are magnets for our attention.
02:22They draw us in, almost demanding we look at them.
02:37For most people today, just seeing a horse is a rare sight.
02:43Perhaps only a couple times a year, watching races like the Kentucky Derby.
02:54But not so very long ago, horses were everywhere, woven into the fabric of our daily existence.
03:02In the countryside, and even in cities.
03:05The city of New York had tens of thousands of horses that were doing all the work that trucks do.
03:13And they were also doing all of the work that taxis do today.
03:17We don't depend on horses anymore.
03:22But few animals have been as important to the rise of civilization.
03:28For thousands of years, they were our long-distance vehicles.
03:31The muscle and speed we needed to master the world.
03:39But how did this unique partnership form?
03:42Who were the first people to unlock the power of horses?
03:46And what happened once they did?
03:50Recent discoveries in archaeology and paleontology, genetics, and even linguistics,
03:56are revealing the identity of the world's first riders.
04:01As well as the extraordinary relationship humans forged with horses.
04:06And how that bond would change the very course of history.
04:13Horses appeared on the scene long before we did.
04:16What surprisingly looked nothing like the majestic creatures we see today.
04:2555 million years ago, they are small and move like agile dogs.
04:33This dawn horse is well suited to the tropical forests covering much of the earth back then.
04:39Living and foraging among the dense foliage.
04:42It stayed hot for millions of years.
04:47And in all that time, the dawn horse hardly changed at all.
04:51And then, about 15 million years ago, the earth began to cool.
04:56And when it does, forested regions distant from the equator transform into open plains covered with grasses.
05:06And here, the small dog-like horse evolves to avoid predators.
05:13Growing sleek, tall, muscled, and fast.
05:24Although horses first appear in North America, as their numbers grow, they migrate across Beringia.
05:31The land bridge that once connected the continents.
05:39More than 100,000 years ago, herds of horses in Europe and Asia prove a rich source of meat for Stone Age hunters.
05:47People hunted horses.
05:56People hunted horses.
05:57They're meat on the hoof.
05:59They don't have sharp teeth.
06:01It's not like hunting cave lions, you know.
06:04And early hunters know how to find migrating horses.
06:09Horses are relatively predictable animals.
06:12And they tend to follow a regular system of water holes and grazing places.
06:19At Souloutre in central France, there's evidence ancient hunters regularly ambushed horses.
06:26At Souloutre, for about 20,000 years, people were driving wild horses into a kind of cul-de-sac and then killing them with spears for food.
06:42This chunk of earth excavated at Souloutre is dense with horse bones.
06:48Revealing just a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of horses slaughtered here over the centuries.
06:57At Chauvet Cave in southern France, the importance of the horse to our Stone Age ancestors is on clear display.
07:05When you look at this marvelous wall, you see all of the major animals of the Stone Age world depicted.
07:14You've got reindeer and mammoths, big cats, but the horse seems to play the most prominent role.
07:24From their art, many experts believe ancient humans were making a spiritual connection to these animals.
07:30Despite such reverence, prehistoric humans may have overhunted horses.
07:39And by about 10,000 BC, when a changing climate may have also depleted their numbers,
07:46horse herds became scarce in Europe and disappeared entirely in the Americas.
07:51Where they would not return until European explorers sailed them back in ships.
08:02But on the grassy steplands of central Eurasia, the descendants of horses that migrated from America flourish.
08:10And it's here that many experts believe prehistoric humans eventually discover how to ride them.
08:19The steppe refers to this long grasslands plain stretching over 5,000 miles from the edge of today's Europe all the way to Mongolia in Asia.
08:32It's a harsh environment, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and in many places too dry for agriculture.
08:44But you can pasture animals.
08:48And these Kazakh herders are following in the footsteps of their nomadic ancestors,
08:53who may have been among the first people to capture and ride horses.
09:00And Niobe has come here to see what he can learn from them.
09:05As-salamu alaykum.
09:07Who are you, Niobe?
09:09Who are you?
09:11Raising sheep, goats, and cattle is a rugged outdoor existence.
09:15But horses make herding easier, especially when moving grazing animals to new pasture, and Niobe pitches in.
09:28It was surely a big change to turn wild and wary steppe animals into the working horses we see today.
09:36So who were the first people to tame wild horses?
09:40And how did they actually do it?
09:425,500 years ago, the people who lived at this site in Kazakhstan may have been the first culture to master the horse.
09:55The site was discovered 40 years ago, when Russian archaeologist Victor Zybert noticed circles in the earth that turned out to be large houses,
10:06belonging to a steppe people anthropologists call the Boatai.
10:13Prior to creating this village, the Boatai are strictly nomadic, living off the land, foraging and hunting and eating what they could find.
10:24But then they settled down and changed their lifestyle.
10:33By the vast number of horse bones uncovered at the site, they began eating horse meat almost exclusively.
10:42But is eating horses the only use the Boatai had for these animals?
10:50Or could they be riding them as well?
10:53That question has roiled the academic community for decades.
10:58Anthropologists David Anthony and his wife Dorcas Brown have long maintained the Boatai were among the first people to capture and ride horses.
11:13And they've pieced together what they believe is convincing evidence by looking for wear marks a riding bit might make on their teeth.
11:25A bit is part of the bridle or reins.
11:29They can be made of leather or metal and they go in the horse's mouth just here.
11:33So when I apply pressure through the reins, the bit tells the horse what I want it to do.
11:41And David Anthony believes he's found evidence of bit wear in the jaws of Boatai horses.
11:48There is a gap between the molar row and the incisors.
11:53And if you put a bit in the horse's mouth, it sits on top of very sensitive tissue.
11:57And so by pulling on the bit on one side, you pull the bit down against the gum and the horse will turn its head in order to avoid that pressure.
12:07You pull the rein on the other side and the horse will turn its head to avoid that pressure.
12:11And that's how a creature as puny as a human can control an animal the size of a horse.
12:17But a horse doesn't want a bit constantly bearing down on its gums.
12:22The horse can use its tongue to push the bit up and put it onto these teeth to get it off of the soft tissue where it can't hurt them anymore.
12:33And then in this position, if the horse grasps the bit very firmly between the lower teeth and the upper teeth, it can keep the bit off of its tongue and gums.
12:42So we were looking for wear on the front part of the tooth here.
12:47They examined hundreds of samples looking for evidence of bit wear.
12:51You can see that it's broken. He chewed all the way through this bit.
12:56And feel confident they found it.
12:58This is a cast of a tooth from the site of Bataille that's 5,000 years old.
13:04This is the tooth of a modern horse that's been bitted.
13:08And both of them have wear on this front cusp right here.
13:14Despite this apparent evidence, not every expert believed Anthony was correct.
13:19There are people who did not believe that the marks that we saw on the teeth were caused by a bit.
13:26Because those kinds of features can be caused by natural malocclusion in horses.
13:31Besides refuting the bit evidence, other experts argue that images of humans riding horses or chariots do not appear until about 2,000 B.C.
13:46Or 1,500 years after the Bataille.
13:49If the Bataille had become riders, surely this would have been depicted in art.
13:56So are Anthony and Brown correct about teeth wear as evidence for riding?
14:01Archaeologists digging at Bataille Village have been hoping to find other evidence that the Bataille had become riders.
14:12They know that people are smoking, cooking, and eating vast quantities of horse meat.
14:23And they found large concentrations of horse dung and holes from fence posts, indicating the Bataille are keeping horses in corrals.
14:32Something David Anthony believes makes sense for a culture that had become dependent on horses.
14:41It's easier to kill a horse in a corral than it is to find the horses, go out to the place where you have to ambush them, kill them there, and lug it back to your settlement site.
14:53It would be a lot more convenient if you just had horses in a corral, and you could go out and get one whenever you wanted a meal.
15:01Besides serving as a food larder, the corrals could also mean the Bataille are breeding and domesticating horses,
15:09like other cultures are doing with cattle, sheep, and goats, living off these animals for milk, meat, wool, and other products.
15:19If the Bataille are domesticating horses for the same reasons, this would naturally bring greater interaction and familiarity,
15:30making attempts to ride them much easier.
15:34And archaeologist Alan Uttrum set out to prove the Bataille had domesticated horses by focusing on milk.
15:42If people could milk cattle very early on, then people that were living off horse products, why would they not also milk horses?
15:50And if you've got horse milking, you've got a smoking gun for domestication.
15:56Because no one's going to argue with you that people are running after wild horses to milk them.
16:03If the Bataille had been milking tame horses, these broken pottery vessels may have once contained their milk.
16:10So Uttrum brings them to this lab at the University of Bristol.
16:17He wants chemist Richard Evershed to use a process called an isotopic analysis
16:24to see if he can find residues of milk fat still clinging to the pottery,
16:31even after 5,000 years buried in the ground.
16:34The basis of what we do is to look at the organic compounds, the fats that have absorbed into the wall of the pot.
16:44And actually, they're pretty tough to extract.
16:46And we've had to develop some methods to actually open up the structure.
16:50At first, it's all handwork.
16:57We drill off the surface of the pot to reveal a sort of a fresh ceramic surface.
17:04And then we literally break off a small piece, about 2 grams, and we put it into pestle and mortar.
17:12And we literally grind it to a powder. We pound it to a fine powder.
17:17And what that is doing is opening up the pores in the pot.
17:21This will hopefully free traces of specific chemical fingerprints, called isotopes,
17:28of any organic substance the pottery once contained, including milk fat.
17:33The powder is then liquefied and placed into this machine that heats it and analyzes the chemical signature of the gas vapors being released
17:48to see if those signatures match the ones known to come from horse fat.
17:52So these are the results of the isotope analysis. And you can see these two major peaks.
17:59And these are the fatty acids that tell us we've got an animal fat.
18:03A good start. But evidence of fat doesn't necessarily mean milk fat.
18:09It could be carcass fat.
18:12We can't say from just looking at these peaks exactly what type of fat we've got.
18:17And since the bowtie are eating horses...
18:20And if you're cooking meat in a pot, you will obviously get the deposition of a lot of fat as the meat is cooked.
18:26So that didn't work.
18:28Nope.
18:30They go back to the drawing board, realizing they need a way to clearly distinguish milk fat from carcass fat.
18:39And the best way to do that would be to go to the original bowtie environment in Kazakhstan
18:45and gather samples of mare's milk.
18:51The grasses mares eat today should be composed of elements like hydrogen or oxygen
18:57that are similar to those their ancient ancestors ate.
19:02It's the you are what you eat principle.
19:04So you're inheriting the isotope signatures of different foodstuffs that you're eating.
19:08In spring, when mares are nursing, their milk absorbs elevated levels of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium that's in water and grasses.
19:19And this elevation will only be in the milk fat, not in their carcass fat.
19:24When the team analyzes the modern milk samples, they find elevated deuterium peaks that match perfectly those from the bowtie pottery.
19:37This confirms Alan Ootram is right.
19:41The bowtie had been milking domesticated horses.
19:45I don't think anyone can seriously argue that you haven't got decent control of animals if they've been milked.
19:55But it takes practice to milk a horse, as Niobe discovers.
20:01Milking a horse is all about tricking the horse.
20:05So what happens is someone brings a foal in, the foal sucks the milk from the teats, the milk falls, and then they pull the foal away quickly and someone rushes in and milks the horse.
20:16As soon as the mare knows that it's not the foal or suspects something, something's different, the milk dries up.
20:22The mare sensed that I didn't really know what I was doing and as soon as I got a bit of milk out, the teats dried up.
20:28They had to bring the foal back in.
20:30It's really hard.
20:31It's really hard.
20:34Just a little bit.
20:38Only horses used to a human touch would have allowed the bowtie to milk, tame, and ride them.
20:46And so by the time you start to pile all of this evidence on the people living in sedentary villages, milking the mares, eating the horse meat,
20:56it's fairly evident that you have domesticated horses there.
21:02And gathering large herds of domesticated horses would be extremely difficult without horse riders to herd them.
21:11If you ask people who manage horses today, how can you manage horse herds without riding horses?
21:17They laugh at you.
21:19Of course you have to be on horseback to manage herds of horses.
21:24So despite their doubters, all the evidence points to Anthony and Brown being correct.
21:32The bowtie were riding horses.
21:35But how did the bowtie convince large, wild animals to let them climb on their backs?
21:46You choose the docile animals.
21:50So you would approach a horse, and if it ran away, you didn't get it.
21:53But if you approached a horse and it was sort of curious and interested, then you could begin with that horse,
22:01and then go build on from there, build a whole herd from there.
22:12Oh, I think the first riders were getting bucked off pretty fast.
22:16But once they figured it out, why not go long distances?
22:24Especially in the steppes, you know, you always wonder what's over that next horizon.
22:29I think that's what was going on.
22:31They wondered what was past that next horizon.
22:38Riding.
22:40The bowtie's prey has become their companion.
22:42Riding this magical creature must have felt like breaking a law of nature.
22:57Now, the bowtie can herd more animals and trade with distant cultures.
23:03Their horses prime them to become the most dominant force on the steppe.
23:09You would expect the bowtie people with the advantage of horseback riding to have really thrived.
23:15And it looks like they did great.
23:17They had these large conglomerations of people living in these big settlements.
23:23They were feeding themselves magnificently.
23:24But after 3000 BC, they pretty much disappeared.
23:34What became of the bowtie and their horses?
23:38Archaeologists have found little evidence or even human remains in the village that might help them understand their fate.
23:47And that's what makes this discovery by Alan Uttram's team so important.
24:01A fairly intact bowtie skeleton.
24:04We can't stress how rare human remains are at this site.
24:09Their hope is that these bones will yield DNA that geneticists can trace to later populations that may have absorbed the bowtie and become their heirs.
24:20Recovering ancient DNA is extremely difficult.
24:26But Danish geneticist Eske Villesue has earned a global reputation for finding and sequencing the genomes of our oldest ancestors.
24:37And he's come to Bowtie Village to see if this rare skeleton looks like it could yield DNA that has survived the ravages of time.
24:51Hey guys.
24:53Hey, so you found a human, huh?
24:54Yes.
24:56But you have no idea how much of the skeleton is there, huh?
24:59We don't yet. There are quite a lot of bone fragments all around. Some of them are horse bones.
25:03Yeah, yeah.
25:04Erika is impatient to get specimens back to his lab.
25:07But he'll have to wait for the meticulous process of uncovering fragile bones from the packed earth.
25:13And then, hope for the best.
25:16We are getting DNA out of a lot of specimens that we, six, seven years ago, didn't think you could get anything out of whatsoever, right?
25:25And now they're working. So, I mean, it's really hard to predict whether this specimen will work or not, but I'm pretty optimistic.
25:31When you have cleared the head, can we kind of remove the lower jaw to get a tooth?
25:38I think the lower jaw will come away, right?
25:40Up by itself, huh?
25:41Yeah.
25:43Eske wants a tooth.
25:46Because the DNA inside is protected by an outer coating of enamel.
25:51The team gives him one.
25:53Wow.
25:55Okay, this is beautiful.
25:56This is beautiful.
25:57This is beautiful.
25:58This is beautiful.
25:59Oh, this is fantastic.
26:03Amazing.
26:04Yes.
26:06Thank you very much.
26:07You're very welcome.
26:08And there's something else.
26:09Oh, hey, there's a Petrus there, right?
26:11Yeah.
26:12Wow.
26:14The Petrus, a small bone that's part of the skull near the inner ear, is a fortuitous find.
26:22So, the Petrus bone is the most dense bone in the human body.
26:26Therefore, the DNA preservation is better than in other parts of, you can say, the post-skeleton material.
26:36After months of work, Eske and his team identified the genetic signature of the Bautai villager.
26:44They expected to find traces of his genome in later steppe cultures.
26:49But stunningly, they couldn't find it.
26:53The Bautai people, if you want, as far as we know, haven't left any direct descendants.
27:01Despite their resources and well-established community, the Bautai somehow died out.
27:09It's kind of tragic irony that they do something extremely challenging.
27:15They domesticated the horse.
27:18Probably one of the most influential events in human history.
27:22But they don't take over the world with this new major power they have.
27:28I mean, they become a dead end, right?
27:30They don't have an impact.
27:34As it turns out, we know more about the fate of Bautai horses than the Bautai people.
27:40French geneticist Ludovic Orlando has also come to Bautai village to collect bones for DNA sampling.
27:50In his case, horse bones, not human ones.
27:55If these are indeed the remains of the world's first domesticated horses,
27:59then Orlando believes it's very likely their genetic signature will have passed on to all domesticated horses living today.
28:13He took samples back to his lab to see if his theory was correct.
28:17I was expecting the first population of domestic horses to have been the source of all and every possible domestic horse that lives on the planet today.
28:29But when he ran the tests, the results came as a shock.
28:33I have no way to express how wrong I've been actually.
28:41When Orlando sequenced the Bautai horse genome and looked for its signature in modern horses, he couldn't find it.
28:49As if the Bautai horses, like their masters, had disappeared.
28:53But then, in a surprising twist, he found them in the least likely horses imaginable.
29:03The big surprise is that it's a Shavalski horse.
29:08The Shavalski horse.
29:11For centuries, these unique-looking horses were thought to be the last and only wild horses on Earth, living in a remote area of Mongolia.
29:20As it turns out, they are the genetic descendants of Bautai horses that returned to the wild when their masters disappeared.
29:38So these last of the wild horses are actually descendants of the first domesticated horses.
29:48A living legacy of their Bautai masters.
29:53Although the Bautai fade away, another steppe culture seizes the mantle of horse kings.
30:00They are called the Yamnaya.
30:07Bands of nomads who roamed a territory north of the Black and Caspian seas at the start of what's called the Bronze Age.
30:17By about 3000 BC, they become the greatest horse culture of the ancient world.
30:23The most important thing about the Yamnaya culture is that they were the first culture to take advantage of both horseback riding plus wagons.
30:35Although the first wagons are heavy and crude-looking, they are a breakthrough technology.
30:40Wagons stocked with food and supplies, accompanied by horse-herded flocks, allowed the Yamnaya to easily move to the best pasture lands.
30:54And in no time, the Yamnaya are out-competing other steppe cultures.
30:59The horses helped them increase their herds.
31:04And so they could get more sheep, more cattle and more meat.
31:08And so they became wealthier.
31:11Horse-herders could beat everybody up.
31:14And if anyone dares to resist the Yamnaya, here too, the horse gives them the upper hand.
31:23Literally.
31:24It was an advantage to ride up to somebody on a horse and use the horse as a platform.
31:33The height advantage is a real advantage.
31:37I think we find it hard to imagine how thoroughly they could overcome other populations who are just sitting there and unfortunately very, very vulnerable.
31:48Over time, the Yamnaya and other cultures they influence develop weapons like battle axes that are lethal on or off a horse.
32:00This battle axe was a very important piece.
32:08The edge is not sharp.
32:10It's not very good for cutting wood, but used in battle for, well, breaking skulls.
32:19It's very efficient.
32:20All over Europe, we find actually skulls which has been, well, broken by explodes.
32:32With their horses, wagons and weapons, the Yamnaya and other cultures they combined with begin to range ever farther from the central steppe.
32:41Moving as far east as Mongolia and west into the heart of Europe.
32:49And David Anthony contends these aggressive nomads dominate almost every population they encounter.
32:57Because many people begin speaking Yamnaya.
33:00The language is connected to power or to wealth.
33:06People drop the language they're speaking and adopt a new language because that language gives them advantages.
33:12But the Yamnaya left no written record of their language.
33:17So how could Anthony or anyone possibly know what their language looked like or sounded like?
33:23Andrew Byrd believes these words are close to those spoken by the Yamnaya.
33:36He's made up the story, but can trace the words back to the time they were first spoken.
33:44And then reconstruct the language they came from.
33:47Linguists have long maintained that many languages in Europe and Asia, including ancient Greek and Roman,
33:58Romance languages like French and Spanish, Germanic languages including English and the Scandinavian languages,
34:06even Russian and Indian Sanskrit, all derived from a common language source.
34:12If you look at languages like English and Latin and Greek, Sanskrit and Russian,
34:21and you start to see these words looking very, very similar to one another.
34:26For example, if you look at the word for brother within English, it's brother.
34:31If you jump down to ancient Rome, it's frater, as in our word fraternity.
34:35If you go to ancient India, it's bratar.
34:39And if you go to ancient Greece, you have pretar.
34:42And you could see that these words look so overwhelmingly similar.
34:46They have Rs after some sort of B or P-like element.
34:49They have a T sort of thing in the middle of the word.
34:51They all end in R.
34:53And the fact that all of these things look alike can't be by chance,
34:57leading us to the only sensible conclusion is to say that these all were inherited from an ancient language.
35:02Linguists call this source language Proto-Indo-European.
35:09They can take a word like is and trace its spelling and sound pattern back through past languages
35:15to approximately when the word first appeared.
35:17They can do this with many words, like father.
35:24And most seem to originate in the period of Yamnaya expansion.
35:32And some words, like wheel, connect directly with the Yamnaya and only appear after the Yamnaya become dominant.
35:43You can establish that the later Indo-European languages all expanded after 3500 B.C.
35:50because they have the wheel and wagon vocabulary.
35:53And wheels and wagons didn't exist.
35:56They had to be invented first.
35:58It's very much like the word hard disk.
36:01It shows up in dictionaries in 1978.
36:03And dictionaries before 1978 didn't have the word hard disk in them because it hadn't been invented yet.
36:12And so Proto-Indo-European must have been spoken after wheels were invented.
36:17Therefore, we assume that there was some ancestral language which we can call Yamnaya,
36:23which was the source of all of these languages.
36:25But how did these bands of nomads overwhelm other cultures so completely that people began speaking their language?
36:35Shouldn't there be some indication they have become conquerors?
36:39There is very little evidence that what happened 4800 years ago is related to violence.
36:45That there was a massive amount of warriors coming in and just like stabbing and killing everybody because we don't find evidence for that.
36:51So how did Yamnaya language and culture spread across Europe and Asia?
36:58Is there something more tangible than language to account for their dominant presence?
37:04Back in Copenhagen, Eskavillisu had long puzzled over the question.
37:11Which ancient cultures were most responsible for the ancestry of people living today?
37:17Our history, far back in time, is actually written still in our genes.
37:27And that means you can follow human history by analyzing the genome of these ancient individuals.
37:38He was especially curious about the Yamnaya.
37:41If they had dominated large parts of Europe and Asia, then their DNA should have passed on to future generations down to the present.
37:51His team began by sequencing ancient remains from across Eurasia and then comparing them to a Yamnaya genome to see how widely the Yamnaya genes had spread.
38:05They then compared this data to the genomes of modern populations and put the results on what are called PCA plots.
38:16PCA is a way of understanding very simply and visually the differences in genetic ancestry between populations.
38:23For example, you put a bunch of people from Europe on a PCA and you'll notice that the people in northern and southern Europe separate.
38:33The second thing you want to do on this is to overlay ancient populations on top of the modern populations and see where they lie.
38:42These two plots show modern population groups as grey dots in Europe and Central Asia.
38:50When we overlay the genomes of people who lived 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, we see almost no overlap, indicating little genetic connection to people living today.
39:03But in this plot, representing the approximately 5,000 year old Yamnaya expansion, the dots overlap significantly.
39:15Meaning today, millions of people of European and Asian descent owe their ancestry to Yamnaya nomads of the Eurasian steppe.
39:24What we didn't understand from the archaeology is the extent of the movement and the impact that the Yamnaya had on genetic ancestry.
39:36But now we know that up to 50% and 30% respectively of the genetics of Europe and South Asia are directly descended from that of the Yamnaya.
39:46So the impact is huge as much as any genetic ancestry that we have.
39:50And the Yamnaya could not have made such a massive and wide-ranging genetic impact without their horses and wagons.
40:05Anthropologists like Anthony were right that the early Bronze Age is characterized by this very significant movement of the Yamnaya peoples.
40:16The Yamnaya peoples on horses that are very speedy, very fast, into Northwestern Europe and Central Asia.
40:24And they're bringing with them, of course, the genes, the culture and the language.
40:29But the majority of archaeologists, you know, didn't believe this was the case.
40:35For Anthony and Brown, this was vindication.
40:38The Yamnaya had been masters of their universe.
40:43We were very happy.
40:45We were smiling and laughing and going,
40:48Oh, my God, I can't believe it's that big.
40:50But I was pretty sure these guys were roaming all over the place.
40:53But a big question remained.
40:56It appears Yamnaya numbers are small compared to the size of the populations they encountered.
41:05So despite the advantage their horses gave them, Esker wondered if there could be other factors that weakened the populations they dominated.
41:14And first we thought, well, maybe it's some kind of climatic changes and we went, you know, through the climate records and we couldn't really see anything very dramatically.
41:26And then there was one of the archaeologists on the team said, well, what about diseases, right?
41:31So we thought, well, let's look for pestis.
41:33Yersinia pestis.
41:37Yersinia pestis, the plague.
41:41During the Middle Ages, this lethal pandemic killed over half the population of Europe.
41:48If it had struck during Yamnaya times, it might have decimated local populations, clearing a path for a Yamnaya takeover.
41:57Esker decided to see if he could find traces of the plague in the bones of the Yamnaya and the people they encountered.
42:08But he would need lots of human samples to test.
42:12Remarkably, in St. Petersburg, Russia, a rather unique anthropology museum had just what he needed.
42:20Some of the museum's displays have a Ripley's believe it or not feel to them.
42:31But the real treasures are in storage.
42:34As Niobe finds out firsthand.
42:37If you're after DNA from any part of the former Soviet Union, this is the place to come.
42:44The museum of anthropology that Peter the Great founded over 300 years ago.
42:50The Kunstkamera.
42:52So for centuries, Russian archaeologists have been coming back to these storerooms with their discoveries.
42:58And today, well, the collection of human remains is astounding.
43:04There are hundreds of skulls and skeletal remains from different time periods and throughout Asia and Europe.
43:19Oh, wow, okay.
43:21This is a large collection.
43:23And Esker has convinced the museum's archaeologist, Slava Moiseev,
43:27to let him take back scores of teeth and petrous bones to analyze in his lab.
43:38The two men work for days cutting samples.
43:42Nothing like the smell of fresh bone in the morning.
43:46Carefully documenting each specimen and literally pulling teeth.
43:51Moiseev has one group of Yamnaya samples he knows Esker will want.
44:03This is rather strange burials.
44:07Because mostly people had just single burials.
44:11And this consists of seven individuals.
44:14It's quite a huge one.
44:16Oh, wow.
44:18Group graves became common for later era plague victims.
44:22So these samples will go to the top of the stack.
44:28In the end, the museum, like the tooth fairy,
44:32bequeaths Esker a gold mine of samples.
44:36And sure enough, many contained genetic evidence of the plague.
44:40We start screaming and, you know, bang, it just jumped out, right?
44:46I mean, so we saw fragments of it and then we said, wow.
44:50This is basically evidence of pestis and plague epidemics.
44:553,000 years before any written record.
45:00So it was an amazing result.
45:02The evidence shows the plague begins in the steppe.
45:07Possibly in Yamnaya communities.
45:10And including the family of seven buried together in a single grave.
45:14So clearly at some point, the Yamnaya themselves are suffering horribly.
45:32But those that do survive probably develop immunity.
45:37And as they expand their reach, they become like the grim reaper on horseback.
45:46Carrying plague germs with them.
45:49The plague is spreading with those people.
45:52Those people actually bring the plague into the regions that they move into.
45:57And where people have no previous exposure, only a few survive.
46:03And what happens to those survivors is an age-old story.
46:10The Yamnaya brought a really deadly disease with them.
46:15That could have been responsible for a large part of the population replacement.
46:21There are other ways though, of course, to replace a population other than disease.
46:26You can directly kill them.
46:28And it does look like the survival of males was much less than the survival of females.
46:38You find Yamnaya tribes that regularly engage in raiding, killing the men, and taking local women.
46:48And using those women to produce Yamnaya offspring,
46:51the ancient world could be a very unpleasant place.
46:59When I started this project, I had this very romantic view of the whole thing.
47:04And kind of, you know, dreamt about, you know, living myself during the Yamnaya times, right?
47:09I have changed that conception.
47:11I'm happy to live now.
47:12The full impact of the Yamnaya's culture, language, and genetic dominance would take centuries passing down to other cultures they combined with.
47:27It's sort of a slow rolling process.
47:30It's not like one group of people is just packing up their bags and moving off to Iberia or England or South Asia or India or wherever you want to go.
47:38But they're meeting large groups of people who are farming and, you know, doing their thing.
47:43And then there's a hybrid culture that evolves and a hybrid genetic ancestry that evolves.
47:48And these people then subsequently move to other parts of the world.
47:50But back on the steppe, the Yamnaya continued their nomadic ways and inspire later steppe people to take horsemanship to a whole other level.
48:03If we go back to the steppe where Yamnaya came from, horses continued to be extremely important.
48:10And in fact, a new form of military vehicle was probably invented by the people in the steppes around 2000 BC, the chariot.
48:25Pulled by swift horses, the chariot is the first high-speed vehicle.
48:31And many ancient cultures begin using it in battle, especially on level ground like deserts.
48:40But the most significant developments come when the great horse cavalries of first the Huns and then the Mongols begin thundering across the steppe.
48:53These skilled horsemen could ride and shoot at the same time and become the most lethal military force the world has ever seen.
49:02Capable of bringing armies and whole cities across Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean to their knees.
49:15Although these steppe warriors emerged centuries after the Botei and Yamnaya, their roots go back to those first riders and their mastery of horses.
49:29If you just think of some of the great empire leaders in history, for example, Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great.
49:43So many of them built their empire on the backs of horses and that of course led to the spread of civilization, the spread of all kinds of technologies, the Silk Road, various trade routes, everything hinged on having horses.
50:01The reverence ancient people had for horses revealed first in early cave paintings would continue for thousands of years.
50:11This bronze and gold sun chariots discovered in Denmark perhaps expresses this best and is one of the most important symbols of the Bronze Age.
50:22Here the horse is God's partner helping pull the sun across the heavens.
50:31We could wonder why the horse became the most prominent helpers of the sun.
50:37But I think the reason is that the horse was and is even today perhaps the most aristocratic animal that you can find.
50:49A natural choice for a divine being, the very symbol of movement.
50:55Getting the first time on a horseback here and being able to just feel the speed and the distance you can cover.
51:10You can say the whole possibility of exchanging knowledge, understanding the world you are in, it's a game changer, right?
51:18It's a game changer in human history.
51:22For nearly 6,000 years, horses have been the human race's special companion.
51:30Our extra muscle, our overland vehicles and symbols of power.
51:38Horses gave us the freedom to move and that freedom changed the very nature of human life.
51:44For all we puny humans lack, horse power made up for it.
51:54It's hard to imagine where we'd be, what our world would look like without horses.
51:59Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following.
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