Horse domestication in Kazakhstan

 

Stone Age trade routes yield spectacular finds on alpine pass

In the hot summer of 2003 two wanderers from the Swiss Thun did not trust their eyes. They stood at the edge of an icefield at the Schnidejoch above Lenk, when they discovered a birchbark arrow-quiver. A dating with the archaeological service of the canton Berne showed that the birchbark is nearly 5000 years old. Meanwhile the Bernese archaeologist searched the area thoroughly and found some evidence for a much-used connection between that Bernese upper country and north Italy. The glacier between the today's ski place Lenk in the north and Sitten, the principal place in the canton Wallis, had released pieces of find from four different epochs. For the archaeologists, the discovery is of comparable importance to Oetzi, the South Tirol glacier corpse.

"Naturally, Oetzi is more sensational", says Peter Suter, Leader of the department of prehistory and early history with the archaeological service in Berne. "However for historical research, these finds from several centuries are just as important." Because they represent not only a snapshot, but as it were a diagram of the settlement and climatic history in the central Alps. The oldest finds are clothing remnants and articles of equipment dated from the Late Stone Age and the epoch between 2800 and 2500 BC. Among them are a birchbark arrow-quiver, some stone arrowheads as well as fragments of Stone Age leather shoes and trousers. The researchers found also particles of human skin as well as skin remnants, which may come from a horse. "One asks oneself, what was a horse doing there?", says Peter Suter.
(2003)
http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article17 ... swege.html