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.
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…
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