Dans le cadre des rencontres de l’équipe SAPOA (Sociétés, Animaux, Plantes en Orient et Afrique) de l’UMR 7209, nous avons le plaisir d’accueillir Dr. William Taylor (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Allemagne) pour une conférence intitulée :

Horse Riding, Horse Herding, and The Origins of Mobile Pastoralism in Ancient Mongolia

 Abstract: The grassy steppes of Mongolia eastern Eurasia are famously known for their skillful use of horses in combat, which powered the Eurasian conquests of the Mongol Empire and other nomadic polities. Recent archaezoological research using horse remains from Late Bronze Age ritual deposits suggests that the innovation of sophisticated horse riding caused dramatic changes to the ecology of herding life in Mongolia during the late second millennium BCE. With horse riding, early pastoralists were able to move further and faster, exploit drier areas, herd different kinds of animals in larger numbers, and keep horses in greater numbers for both meat and milk. Innovations in animal care and veterinary dentistry by these early pastoralists may have enabled more sophisticated control during transport. These results suggest a tight causal link between herding ecology and the emergence of sophisticated horsemanship, which may help explain other social transformations across the Old and New Worlds in prehistory.

La conférence aura lieu le mardi 19 mars 
au Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
dans le petit amphithéâtre d’entomologie
de 13h30 à 15h30

Allez-y nombreux!