MIASU Research Seminar – 13 May – Will Taylor

Understanding animal domestication and early pastoral lifeways in the Mongolian Altai

Will Taylor (University of Colorado Museum of Natural History)

Despite the outsized importance of the eastern Eurasian steppes in many chapters of the human story - from the earliest dispersal of hominins through the rise of transcontinental empires - shallow coverage in the archaeological record and poor integration between cultural and paleoecological datasets have prevented a coherent understanding of how animal use in the steppes shaped the early human story. New discoveries from unique archaeological contexts, including melting mountain ice and well-preserved dry cave deposits, provide some of the first detailed datasets to trace ancient human-animal interactions in the Altai. Preliminary results demonstrate the key role for horses in not only early herding but also high-mountain hunting, and underscore the transformative impacts of animal transport on ancient lifeways in eastern Eurasia.