For the sake of a focused discussion of the PoD, please accept the following (in part controversial) premises as given IOTL (and maybe necessary background information for the what-if):
1.) The Eurasian steppe horse was domesticated for the first time somewhere between the Dnieper and Volga basins, in the Sredni Stog, Khvalynsk or Svobodnoe cultures, i.e. at some point between 4500 and 3600 BCE, more likely earlier within this timeframe than later.
2.) Its domestication mainly served the purpose of providing meat (hippophagy, i.e. they ate their horses).
3.) To herd increasingly large groups of horses, you needed to ride some of the horses.
4.) To ride the horses effectively, you needed snaffles.
5.) The climate in the Pontic steppe became increasingly arid throughout the 5th millennium BCE (and was getting even drier throughout the 4th BCE).
6.) All three above-mentioned cultures inherited a lifestyle which mixed riverine agriculture, fishing, and herding (initially primarily cattle, but as the climate became drier, increasingly horses).
7.) As they came to rely increasingly on horsemeat and wider-range pastoralism, at least the former two cultures developed towards an increasingly mobile (seasonally/semi-nomadic) and predominantly pastoralist lifestyle, which we know as the following Yamnaya culture.
Now, what if neither of the above-mentioned cultures (and, for the sake of argument, also none of the either steppe-dwelling cultures in the given timeframe, i.e. before 3000 BCE) invents the snaffle, i.e. neither of the above-mentioned cultures is able to effectively domesticate horses to an extent which comes even remotely close to the situation of the Yamnaya horizon?
I know that "No Yamnaya" has extremely serious repercussions and is prone to leave our world totally unrecognisable - let us please NOT FOCUS ON THAT. (So no discussion about Europe, the Middle East, or India without Indo-European migrations etc.; those are fascinating, but not what I´m interested in right now. I´m planning to explore one of these paths in a future timeline, so right now I´m interested in the specific context stated below.)
Evidently, increasing aridity reduces the carrying capacity of the land. That means a lot of hungry people. Many of them are going to migrate out of the steppes, die, or do the latter while attempting the former. That, too, is immensely interesting, as these migrations are going to look different from the Yamnaya expansion. But again, that is also not what I am interested in right now.
FOCUS:
What happens among those who stay behind in the Pontic steppe, let`s say until roughly 3000 BCE?
What takes the place of the Yamnaya culture in this specific region?
I would assume that, instead of the space-filling Yamnaya culture, we would see more varied, geographically limited cultures. But how do they change and adapt to the conditions of a drier steppe? Sredni Stog and Kvalynsk can`t just continue. How do you imagine the successor cultures in the Pontic steppe - what do they eat? How is their society structured? Which metals do they work and how? Which parts of the region do they inhabit? From where do they absorb influences? Do they bury their deceased in kurgans? Etc.
I know this is difficult because prehistorical. But I´d appreciate your contributions a lot, since they`d be very helpful in attempting to work out how the world, which is developing in the back of my head, should really look like, before I embark on the adventure of writing a pre-historical timeline.
1.) The Eurasian steppe horse was domesticated for the first time somewhere between the Dnieper and Volga basins, in the Sredni Stog, Khvalynsk or Svobodnoe cultures, i.e. at some point between 4500 and 3600 BCE, more likely earlier within this timeframe than later.
2.) Its domestication mainly served the purpose of providing meat (hippophagy, i.e. they ate their horses).
3.) To herd increasingly large groups of horses, you needed to ride some of the horses.
4.) To ride the horses effectively, you needed snaffles.
5.) The climate in the Pontic steppe became increasingly arid throughout the 5th millennium BCE (and was getting even drier throughout the 4th BCE).
6.) All three above-mentioned cultures inherited a lifestyle which mixed riverine agriculture, fishing, and herding (initially primarily cattle, but as the climate became drier, increasingly horses).
7.) As they came to rely increasingly on horsemeat and wider-range pastoralism, at least the former two cultures developed towards an increasingly mobile (seasonally/semi-nomadic) and predominantly pastoralist lifestyle, which we know as the following Yamnaya culture.
Now, what if neither of the above-mentioned cultures (and, for the sake of argument, also none of the either steppe-dwelling cultures in the given timeframe, i.e. before 3000 BCE) invents the snaffle, i.e. neither of the above-mentioned cultures is able to effectively domesticate horses to an extent which comes even remotely close to the situation of the Yamnaya horizon?
I know that "No Yamnaya" has extremely serious repercussions and is prone to leave our world totally unrecognisable - let us please NOT FOCUS ON THAT. (So no discussion about Europe, the Middle East, or India without Indo-European migrations etc.; those are fascinating, but not what I´m interested in right now. I´m planning to explore one of these paths in a future timeline, so right now I´m interested in the specific context stated below.)
Evidently, increasing aridity reduces the carrying capacity of the land. That means a lot of hungry people. Many of them are going to migrate out of the steppes, die, or do the latter while attempting the former. That, too, is immensely interesting, as these migrations are going to look different from the Yamnaya expansion. But again, that is also not what I am interested in right now.
FOCUS:
What happens among those who stay behind in the Pontic steppe, let`s say until roughly 3000 BCE?
What takes the place of the Yamnaya culture in this specific region?
I would assume that, instead of the space-filling Yamnaya culture, we would see more varied, geographically limited cultures. But how do they change and adapt to the conditions of a drier steppe? Sredni Stog and Kvalynsk can`t just continue. How do you imagine the successor cultures in the Pontic steppe - what do they eat? How is their society structured? Which metals do they work and how? Which parts of the region do they inhabit? From where do they absorb influences? Do they bury their deceased in kurgans? Etc.
I know this is difficult because prehistorical. But I´d appreciate your contributions a lot, since they`d be very helpful in attempting to work out how the world, which is developing in the back of my head, should really look like, before I embark on the adventure of writing a pre-historical timeline.