Cattle, Yaks, Traction, and the Bronze Age Spread of Pastoralism into the Mongolian Steppe

Abstract

Cattle traction helped increase crop yields and enhance trade of staple goods among sedentary agricultural communities for millennia, but oxen labor was also important for mobile pastoralists, particularly in Inner Asia where yaks were also herded, and was used to carry materials, portable dwellings, and people. In the Altai Mountains, a rich petroglyph record depicts vibrant scenes of abundant wildlife, people, and also cattle and yaks associated with the Bronze Age, a dynamic period of human movement and technological transmission that spanned the third to mid-second millennium BC. In the Mongolian Altai, cattle and yaks are variously depicted on leads guided by human caretakers, ridden by people, fitted with nose rings or carrying loads, but they are not shown pulling carts or wagons that were used by Bronze Age mobile communities in the western steppe belt. Two-wheeled vehicles appear subsequently in later Bronze Age petroglyphs, and only in association with horses. Although the precise origins of cattle and yak exploitation in Inner Asia remain unresolved in the absence of in-depth biomolecular and zooarchaeological studies, the rock art record strongly suggests the earliest livestock complex in the Mongolian Altai was based on dual cattle and yak herding, and that traction modes involving pack carrying and riding helped facilitate the spread of pastoral nomadism into the region. Even after the introduction and incorporation of horses into the daily and ritual lives of Inner Asian mobile pastoralists, cattle and yak traction remained an important part of herding lifeways, used to transport gers, timber, fodder, water, dung, and people by historic and contemporary herders.