No Snaffle: Development of Pontic Steppe in the 5th/4th millennia BCE?

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.
 
To ride the horses effectively, you needed snaffles.
Well, first of all horses were used for chariots and only in a millennium or so riding developed.
You know, looking at that relief of early war wagons on the Standard of Ur, c. 2500 BCE, I cannot see any snaffles. But these war wagons were definitely used at war.

My point is given some domesticated horses (or horse-like animals) people would find a way to drive them, this way or another. You cannot stop this process, I think.
 
Well, first of all horses were used for chariots and only in a millennium or so riding developed.
You know, looking at that relief of early war wagons on the Standard of Ur, c. 2500 BCE, I cannot see any snaffles. But these war wagons were definitely used at war.

My point is given some domesticated horses (or horse-like animals) people would find a way to drive them, this way or another. You cannot stop this process, I think.
First of all, thanks for your reply.
1) The standard is from 2500 BCE and from Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians had received domesticated horses from the North. I would be very glad if we could focus on the time frame before 3000 BCE and the Pontic steppe, where these horses were domesticated. Autochtonically, Mesopotamians had domesticated onagers. Later, after the Yamnaya expansion and permeation of cultural elements pertaining to the domestication of horses to the South, onagers were substituted for horses. Let´s leave this whole question aside. You can either go with onagers pulling Mesopotamian wagons, or you can believe in a domestication of the horse after 3000 BCE, both are fine with me, but both don`t answer the question of my OP.
2) I don`t mean riding as in "warrior horsemen". I think there`s almost a scholarly consensus that the Yamnaya were no horseback warriors. But it´s also dubious if they had war wagons before 3000 BCE. For their expansion, it was absolutely sufficient that relying on horsemeat increased their population size and herding over large distances made them mobile and spread their culture, whether by peaceful or martial means, over a wide area.
3) Before the whole question of horseback warriors and even horse-drawn war chariots came up, the Yamnaya had to be able to ride horses. If you can`t ride horses, you can`t herd hundreds of them in the open steppe. They were horse-herders, and they couldn`t have done that by foot or from the sort of wagons they had, regardless of whether they were pulled by horses or oxen. They rode them. And for that, they needed snaffles. The Mesopotamians received considerably tamed varieties of this species. For the steppe dwellers of the late 5th / 4th millennium BCE, no snaffles means horses remain a wild species to them, of which you cant hunt some and either captivate them or eat them straight away, but they won`t herd and breed them in great numbers and over a prolonged period of time.
4) Maybe people will find a way to drive domestical horses or horse-like animals. Let´s just say they don`t do that before 3000 BCE. That´s just postponing it for more or less a millennium (and a millennium of the Chalcolithic or very early Bronze Age at that). Is that really implausible in your view?
 
Before the whole question of horseback warriors and even horse-drawn war chariots came up, the Yamnaya had to be able to ride horses.
That's what the common sense tells you.

But archaeology and all other sources say:
- first chariots (wagons)
- secondly riding on the back of a horse
period.
 
That's what the common sense tells you.

But archaeology and all other sources say:
- first chariots (wagons)
- secondly riding on the back of a horse
period.
We have carts and wagons, pulled by all sorts of animals (but not yet horses) from approximately 3450-3300 onwards.
We have evidence of snaffles in the Botai culture, which is contemporaneous (but far more Eastern). (Well, we have bit wear in horses` teeth.)
And we have a massive rise in horse bones in the garbage deposits of the 4th millennium, telling of horses becoming a staple meat. What is the alternative explanation for that, if people couldn`t ride horses? How do you either hunt enough horses or herd them without being able to be as fast as they are? (Other domesticated animals of steppe dwellers like cattle and sheep were clearly not fast enough, nor were the humans themselves.) Hell, even the herding of large amounts of cattle is a pain without horses - and look how neatly the time frames for horse skulls showing bit wear and food garbage bone deposits shifting from fish and wild game to cattle and horses fit each other.
Earliest evidence of horses drawing wagons or chariots are from the Sintashta culture, i.e. no sooner than 2800 BCE.
 
We have evidence of snaffles in the Botai culture, which is contemporaneous (but far more Eastern).
Well, if that's true, the snaffles might be used for horses pulling chariots (wagons). So it doesn't prove fact of riding on a back of a horse.

How do you hunt enough horses without being able to be as fast as they are?
Well, people hunted horses for tens of thousands years; human beings are extremely clever and incredibly enduring. Сhase hunting (like packs of wolves do), ambushes, bows/arrows, spear-throwers, etc.

How do you herd horses without being able to be as fast as they are?
Things like that might help.

146727_original.jpg
 
If the discussion is what would occur if the Yamnaya culture did not event the appropriate equipment to allow horse riding(?). I might can contribute some to the discussion.

From what we believe considering the Kurgan Hypothesis (which is what we will assume is orthodoxy here), the various Indo-Aryan peoples migrated out from the Pontic Steppe in the dawn of the XIX BCE, going to various lands and taking over the lands in a similar fashion to the phenomena we see in the Mid East and Uganda. For instance, Bantu peoples expansion into various sections of Africa did not come entirely by conquest or through war, but through simple migratory patterns and intermarriage, leading to crucial linguistic and cultural changes in areas across Africa. In the same manner, the Akkadian spread into upper and lower Iraq is an example, where Akkadian speakers migrated into Sumerian (and possibly other groups who were related to Sumerian speakers or the so called Sumerian substrate) lands and over time became dominant in many ways to that of Sumerian, likely through the same process. The city of Kish is a renowned example of this linguistic shift, in the heart of Sumer, Akkadian was almost certainly the most prominent language as early as we can tell. The same occurred for the Indo-Aryans who migrated outwards and formed unions with various peoples of the steppe and into Bactria, Europe and into India. However, you do not wish to discuss the effect of no migration, instead only the Pontic Steppe and other lands nearby.

Well for starters, one does not need horses to spread forth and do what they would do about 1000 years in the future. The proto Akkadian culture that was surely a descendent of a Semitic pastoralist culture migrated into the upper Iraqi river valley as pastoralists without horses and came to dominate large sums of land. The Sumerians may have done the same, if the hypothesis is correct that they originate from Eastern Arabia as opposed to the view that they are the direct descendants of early Iraqi fishermen and farmers.

In the Pontic Steppe however, I can imagine the cultures warring over land in tribal conflicts over time, especially along the various rivers that dot the landscape. Some will inevitably forced outward to other lands, especially west, east and south. From what we see at Tollense, the cultures and people of the Baltic and north may have been more advanced than we previously believed. In my personal opinion, it may be the case that a recurring event happened in the Pontic Steppe moving inwards to Europe for quite some time until the Middle Ages. That is, the formation of a large and powerful state of confederated tribes and people similar to the Huns, on the fringes of Europe and slowly pushing into Europe. However, this state collapses, just as the Huns did and leads to the mass migration of entire tribes westward. It would seem possible considering the evidence at Tollense and I suspect in the next 20 years, more is added to this. So, one proposition I have, is regards to if the Yamnaya developed a more sedentary system of living along the rivers of the steppe, attempting to survive, perhaps they develop qanat like irrigations across the land or other sorts of irrigation to power itself. The Persians developed such for the hostile and more arid land of Iran, so why not in the Pontic Steppe?

I am not sure on the diversity of peoples in the area. I do not believe that without the horse, the Yamnaya will simply not conquer and move out from the Pontic Steppe, but without the horse, they might be able to develop more along the lines of limited farming along the rivers (I do not know the capacity for farming in the Pontic Steppe at the time).

Also, what happens to the Oxus Valley Civilization? This is a very curious civilization to me, it rarely is covered and would fit in with this timeline.
 
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Well, if that's true, the snaffles might be used for horses pulling chariots (wagons). So it doesn't prove fact of riding on a back of a horse.


Well, people hunted horses for tens of thousands years; human beings are extremely clever and incredibly enduring. Сhase hunting (like packs of wolves do), ambushes, bows/arrows, spear-throwers, etc.


Things like that might help.

146727_original.jpg
Unlikely that wagons, which appeared at the fringes of the steppe only in the 34th century at the earliest can explain bit wear on finds thousands of kilometers farther East in a culture which dates from the 38th to the 32nd century. Not excluded, but unlikely. Yet, if we went by your "no riding" hypothesis, then what we're left with (picture of bound legs) hints at a LIMITED domestication as possibility 1. That might not change their lifestyle as revolutionarily as the Yamnaya development did. Fishing and riverine agriculture may remain important. How sedentary would these guys be?
 
Excellent ideas, Thanks! The Oxus Civ / BMAC is certainly thrilling; it might well thrive longer and expand on camel-back...

I"m skeptical of water management, though. The Persians lived in a land with millennia of agricultural Tradition and close to the oldest urban state societies on the Planet. In the Pontic Steppe, agriculture had only a shallow Tradition and I doubt anyone woul have come up with such a complex and innovative idea and pulled it through. But here w have a second option.

A third option may be that the steppe simply becomes a thinly populated underdeveloped backwater, perhaps with a few innovations in fishing or riverine boatcraft, but otherwise overshadowed by more fertile lands.
 
I don't have anything to add, but it's nice hearing about the Yamnaya.
I've been thinking. John's argument about the Semites is strong, even though the Pontic Steppe did not become as dry as the Sahara. A mass flight (instead of the Yamnaya expansion) might occur, and people migrating across drying lands would take what livestock they have left with them. But that would look very different from the Yamnaya. As a first thing, I would say groups along the Dnieper, Don and Volga would remain separate, with post-Samara groups of the volga maybe gravitating towards the Southern Caspian wetlands, post-Khvalynsk groups on the Don migrating towards where IOTL Maykop culture developed (thereby butterflying it away), and post-SRedny Stog cultures migrating towards Cucuteni-Tripolye. That would not leave the steppes empty (even if groups migrated wholesale, others e.g. from the North would move in as th steppes would still be good hunting grounds), as often groups split and only some left. Those who stayed behind may well develop along the lines of riverine agriculture and fishing with limited herding, like their ancestors did. Without the vast expansive Yamnaya network, I suppose their metalworking skills would not be impressive as they would absorb much less influence from the South. Wagons, when they appear here, will improve things a lot as they'll allow long-distance transhumance and may indeed trigger a later alt-yamnaya phenomenon, although I suppose one cannot postpone the invention of snaffles etc. infinitely anyway, so if horses are still around, horse people may develop sooner or later anyway.

With a big emigration wave of starving raiders (as opposed to, if we're inclined to believe Mallory, a robust and attractive social role model to which the Cucuteni-Tripolye switched later, together becoming transformed into the groups who dominated much of non-Mediterranean Bronze Age Europe), I suppose we'll see some Semite-style takeovers in some places, and a militarised responsive development among the people of the more fertile lands, too, in other places.
 
Afterthought:
If hunting horses for meat continues, and domestication only Shows very limited effects, would horses' behaviour adapt fast enough (becoming even shier and retreating farther from human settlements) for a domestication to become unlikely even in later centuries and millennia? (Maybe combined with over-hunting of accessible populations?)
 
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