Domesticating horses had a huge impact on human society鈥攏ew science rewrites where and when it first happened

Across human history, no single animal has had a deeper impact on human societies than the horse. But when and how people domesticated horses has been an ongoing scientific mystery.

Half a million years ago or more, early human ancestors hunted horses with wooden spears, the very , and . During the late Paleolithic era, as far back as 30,000 years ago or more, ancient artists chose wild horses as their muse: Horses are the .

Following their first domestication, horses became the  in the grasslands of , and key leaps forward in technology such as ,  helped make horses the primary means of locomotion for travel, communication, agriculture and warfare across much of the ancient world. With the aid of ocean voyages, these animals eventually reached the shores of every major landmass鈥攅ven Antarctica, briefly.

In his new book Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History, William Taylor, a 精品SM在线影片 assistant professor of anthropology, draws together new archaeological evidence revising what scientists think about when, how and why horses became domesticated.

As they spread, horses reshaped ecology, social structures and economies at a never-before-seen scale. Ultimately, only industrial mechanization supplanted their near-universal role in society.

Because of their tremendous impact in shaping our collective human story, figuring out when, why and how horses became domesticated is a key step toward understanding the world we live in now.

Doing so has proven to be surprisingly challenging. In my new book, , I draw together new archaeological evidence that is revising what  thought we knew about this story.

A horse domestication hypothesis

Over the years, almost every time and place on Earth has been suggested as a possible origin point for horse domestication, from Europe tens of thousands of years ago to places such as Saudi Arabia, Anatolia, China or even the Americas.

By far the most dominant model for horse domestication, though, has been the Indo-European hypothesis, also known as  It argues that, sometime in the fourth millennium BCE or before, residents of the steppes of western Asia and the Black Sea known as the Yamnaya, who built large burial mounds called kurgans, hopped astride horses. The newfound mobility of these early riders, , helped catalyze huge migrations across the continent, distributing ancestral Indo-European languages and cultures across Eurasia.

But what鈥檚 the actual evidence supporting the Kurgan hypothesis for the first horse domestication? Many of the most important clues come from the bones and teeth of ancient animals, via a . Over the past 20 years, archaeozoological data seemed to converge on the idea that horses were first domesticated in sites of the Botai culture in Kazakhstan, where scientists found large quantities of horse bones at sites dating to the fourth millennium BCE.

Other kinds of compelling circumstantial evidence started to pile up. Archaeologists discovered evidence of what looked like fence post holes that could have been part of ancient corrals. They also found  that, based on isotope measurements, seem to have been deposited in the summer months, a time when milk could be collected from domestic horses.

The scientific smoking gun for early horse domestication, though, was a set of  and jawbones. Like the teeth of many modern and ancient ridden horses, the Botai horse teeth appeared to have been worn down by a bridle mouthpiece, or bit.

A Kazakh man on horseback with a golden eagle in an image made between 1911 and 1914. (Photo: )

Together, the data pointed strongly to the idea of horse domestication in northern Kazakhstan around 3500 BCE鈥攏ot quite the Yamnaya homeland, but close enough geographically to keep the basic Kurgan hypothesis intact.

There were some aspects of the Botai story, though, that never quite lined up. From the outset, several studies showed that the mix of horse remains found at Botai were unlike those found in most later pastoral cultures: Botai is evenly split between male and female horses, mostly of a healthy reproductive age. Killing off healthy, breeding-age animals like this on a regular basis would devastate a breeding herd. But this demographic blend is common among animals that have been hunted. Some Botai horses even have projectile points embedded in their ribs, showing that they died through hunting rather than a controlled slaughter.

These unresolved loose ends loomed over a basic consensus linking the Botai culture to horse domestication.

New scientific tools raise more questions

In recent years, as archaeological and scientific tools have rapidly improved, key assumptions about the cultures of Botai, Yamnaya and the early chapters of the human-horse story have been overturned.

First, improved biomolecular tools show that whatever happened at Botai, it had little to do with the domestication of the horses that live today. In 2018, nuclear genomic sequencing revealed that Botai horses were not the ancestors of domestic horses but of , a wild relative and denizen of the steppe that has never been domesticated, at least in recorded history.

Next, when my colleagues and I reconsidered skeletal features linked to horse riding at Botai, we saw that  from North America, which had certainly never been ridden. Even though horse riding can cause recognizable changes to the teeth and bones of the jaw, we argued that the small issues seen on Botai horses can reasonably be linked to natural variation or life history.

This finding reopened the question: Was there horse transport at Botai at all?

Leaving the Kurgan hypothesis in the past

Over the past few years, trying to make sense of the archaeological record around horse domestication has become an ever more contradictory affair.

A re-enactment of Botai hunter-herders (Photo: )

For example, in 2023, archaeologists noted that human hip and leg skeletal problems found in Yamnaya and early eastern European burials looked a lot like problems found in mounted riders, consistent with the Kurgan hypothesis. But problems like these can be caused by other kinds of animal transport, including the .

So how should archaeologists make sense of these conflicting signals?

A clearer picture may be closer than we think. A detailed genomic study of early Eurasian horses, published in , shows that Yamnaya horses were not ancestors of the first domestic horses, known as the DOM2 lineage. And Yamnaya horses showed no genetic evidence of close control over reproduction, such as changes linked with inbreeding.

Instead, the first DOM2 horses appear just before 2000 BCE, long after the Yamnaya migrations and just before the first burials of horses and chariots also show up in the archaeological record.

For now, all lines of evidence seem to converge on the idea that horse domestication probably did take place in the Black Sea steppes, but much later than the Kurgan hypothesis requires. Instead, human control of horses took off just prior to the explosive spread of horses and chariots across Eurasia during the early second millennium BCE.

There鈥檚 still more to be settled, of course. In the latest study, the authors point to some funny patterns in the Botai data, especially fluctuations in genetic estimates for generation time 鈥� essentially, how long it takes on average for a population of animals to produce offspring. Might these suggest that Botai people still raised those wild Przewalski鈥檚 horses in captivity, but only for meat, without a role in transportation? Perhaps. Future research will let us know for sure.

Either way, out of these conflicting signals, one consideration has become clear: The earliest chapters of the human-horse story are ready for a retelling.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the .

This article is republished from  under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Related Articles

精品SM在线影片 researcher analyzes 50 years of data to show the relationship between certain birds鈥� unorthodox behavior and their traits

Hummingbirds are iconic, easily recognized by their plumage, needlelike beaks and unique way of flying. With several hundred species in the family, different species of hummingbirds are distinct from one another in ways that are sometimes less noticeable. 

鈥淚t is the great diversity of forms in this family of birds which renders the study of them so very interesting,鈥� John Gould, a 19th-century English ornithologist and collector of hummingbirds, wrote. 鈥淚f these little objects were magnified to the size of eagles, their structural differences would stand out in very bold relief.鈥� 

This belief led Robert Colwell, museum curator adjoint of entomology and zoology for the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History鈥攁s well as co-researchers Gregor Yanega, Alejandro Rico-Guevara, Thiago Rangel, Karolina Fu膷铆kov谩 and Diego Sustaita鈥攖o collect and evaluate a large amount of data on hummingbirds鈥� physical features for . 

Robert Colwell, museum curator adjoint of entomology and zoology for the CU Museum of Natural History, and his co-researchers found that large feet and short bills correlate in hummingbirds that use an unorthodox feeding behavior.

The researchers found that large feet鈥攁n uncommon trait for hummingbirds, whose feet are usually small to the point of seemingly disappearing when tucked away鈥攃orrelated with short bills in hummingbirds that engage in a particular, unorthodox feeding behavior. 

Legitimate and illegitimate feeding 

Hummingbirds are pollinators, and the flowers they feed from deposit pollen onto different parts of their bodies so that their flight from flower to flower functions to fertilize the plants.

鈥淭he flowers they visit produce nectar for the sole purpose of attracting hummingbirds,鈥� Colwell explains, adding that different species of plants deposit pollen on different species of hummingbirds or different parts of a single species鈥� body. This specificity is necessary because 鈥渋f the bird delivers the wrong pollen, then it just clogs up the plant鈥檚 female organ, the stigma, without fertilizing the flower,鈥� he says. 

While some plants have adapted to get pollen onto different parts of hummingbirds, the focus of this research is on species-based pollen delimitation. The main way that plants attract only certain hummingbird species is to develop corollas (the whorl of petals that protects the flower鈥檚 reproductive organs) with lengths or curvatures that not all hummingbirds鈥� bills can fit into. 

鈥淭he plants sort of partition the hummingbirds based on bill length, bill curvature and flowering season,鈥� Colwell explains. 鈥淚t gets more complicated the more species are involved. In a tropical lowland community, there could be 50 or 60 hummingbird-pollinated species of plants.鈥� 

This evolutionary strategy is successful only when hummingbirds feed 鈥渓egitimately鈥濃�攖hat is, through the mouth of the corolla. A hummingbird with a short beak cannot reach the nectar of a flower with a long corolla; however, such a bird may access that nectar 鈥渋llegitimately鈥� by inserting its beak through natural opening near the base of a flower, poking a hole in the base using its beak, or using a hole made by another hummingbird. This method is called illegitimate because, according to Colwell, it 鈥渄oes nothing to pollinate the plant and imposes an energetic cost on both the plant and legitimate visitors by depleting nectar.鈥� 

Why feed illegitimately? 

Considering the consequences of feeding illegitimately for both the flowers that a nectar thief relies on and other birds, why does this behavior exist? There are a couple of reasons, Colwell says. For one thing, it gives short-billed hummingbirds access to nectar that they otherwise could not reach.

The other reason is that, while most plants force legitimately feeding hummingbirds to hover, according to Colwell, this is not necessary for illegitimate feeders, who can instead cling to a nearby surface while stealing the nectar. Birds that cling to plants to feed, instead of hovering (called clingers), are therefore able to conserve energy in a way that non-clingers cannot. 

Hummingbirds are pollinators, and the flowers they feed from deposit pollen onto different parts of their bodies so that their flight from flower to flower functions to fertilize the plants.

Hovering is the most expensive means of vertebrate locomotion, Colwell says. Consequently, hummingbirds are 鈥渙n a very tight schedule鈥� in terms of energy, 鈥渁nd if the birds have no nectar and insufficient insects to capture for a couple of days, they could die.鈥�

For these reasons, saving energy by perching to feed can be the difference between life and death for a hummingbird. This is especially true in the case of the coquettes, a high-elevation Andean group that developed perching behavior early in the evolution of hummingbirds, Colwell says. Their habitat makes it even more expensive to hover: the air is thinner, making it harder to fly and breathe, and it鈥檚 colder, making the maintenance of healthy body temperatures more difficult. 

鈥淪o, there鈥檚 strong natural selection to avoid hovering, if possible,鈥� he explains. 鈥淭here are some species that actually walk on the ground and feed on flowers that are near the ground.鈥� 

Although clinging and stealing nectar saves energy, all species of hummingbird feed legitimately while hovering at least sometimes, Colwell says. This is because if illegitimate feeding was ubiquitous, 鈥渢he flowers would go extinct because they wouldn鈥檛 be getting pollinated. So, it鈥檚 kind of a game theory thing, where there are cheaters, but you can鈥檛 have all cheaters because then the game won鈥檛 go on.鈥� 

Morphological manifestations of clinging 

As Colwell recounts, the study began with an observation that he made about the morphological differences between clingers and non-clingers: 鈥淚t was an accidental discovery I made 50 years ago in Costa Rica. I was studying a high-elevation site with four species. The ones that are important to this are a very long-billed hummingbird with a large body and a smaller bird with a shorter bill.鈥� 

The expedition was using mist nets to humanely capture birds for measurement, and he noticed that the smaller bird with the short bill had feet that were bigger than those of the larger bird. The little bird perched on and pierced flowers to steal nectar that the larger bird would consume legitimately.

鈥淚 got the idea,鈥� Colwell says, 鈥渢hat maybe this is general; maybe there鈥檚 a negative correlation between bill size and foot size. That鈥檚 how it all started. Sometimes scientific discoveries are accidental in that way, or intuitive, and then you have to go on and look at it statistically.鈥� 

Specifically, Colwell and his research colleagues hypothesized that clingers would have relatively longer toes and claws, as well as shorter tarsi (the bones connecting to bird鈥檚 digits to their lower legs) to make it less energetically costly to cling while feeding.

鈥淭he claw is very important in grasping the flower, or the stem, or the leaf, or whatever it鈥檚 perching on,鈥� Colwell explains. 鈥淏iomechanically, it鈥檚 a crucial part of the gripping force.鈥� 

To determine if this hypothesis were supported by statistics, the researchers collected measurements of hummingbird feet (including the tarsus, hallux or hind toe, hallux claw and middle toe claw) and bills over many years. Ultimately, they pooled three datasets consisting of 1,154 museum specimens and 404 field captures, with 220 of about 340 recognized species of hummingbird represented. 

Within these data, they found that clingers showed a negative correlation between bill and hallux claw size when body weight was accounted for, with no other strong correlations detected. This confirmed part of the hypothesis: among clingers with small bills, the foot span is increased by a longer claw on the hallux. However, clingers did not have smaller tarsi. 

Saving energy by perching to feed can be the difference between life and death for a hummingbird, says 精品SM在线影片 researcher Robert Colwell.

According to Colwell, a role for tarsi was anticipated based on its presence in biomechanical studies of clinging behavior in other birds, such as woodpeckers. 鈥淲e expected that to happen, and it didn鈥檛,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t just means that hummingbirds do it their own way.鈥� 

Losing big feet

In addition to determining the correlation between bill and hallux claw size in clingers, the researchers used phylogenetic inference, a method of finding the evolutionary 鈥渇amily tree鈥� of related species, to estimate the number of independent origins of clinging behavior in hummingbirds. 鈥淲e were surprised at how many different, independent times perching to feed with larger feet arose in the hummingbird phylogeny,鈥� Colwell says, adding that it was over two dozen times. 

Despite this, clinging to feed doesn鈥檛 seem to be a good long-term strategy, as it doesn鈥檛 lead to much speciation (i.e., further evolutionary development) except in the coquette clade, Colwell explains. This may be in part because the additional weight of larger feet would be strongly selected against in most cases, he says. Consequently, a branch of hummingbirds with large feet will tend to lose that trait once it is no longer useful. 

For example, Colwell recounts, 鈥渢here are some species that walk on the ground and feed on flowers that are near the ground, so they have big feet. Late in that branch of the evolutionary tree, some of that group diversified the tropical lowlands, where they lost their big feet and now have longer bills. It beautifully confirms the overall pattern.鈥� 

Colwell adds that what makes the study significant is its focus on an often-overlooked feature of hummingbirds.

鈥淲hen you see hummingbirds, you don鈥檛 think about their feet, you think about their wings, their color, their dives, their voice, their behavior,鈥� he says. 鈥淭heir feet have been ignored for 150 years, since John Gould, who was a very good observer, marveled at them. Nobody paid any attention to it until we got interested in it 50 years ago.鈥� 

Did you enjoy this article?  Passionate about natural history? Show your support.

Related Articles

In his upcoming book, 鈥楬oof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History,鈥� William Taylor writes that today鈥檚 world has been molded by humans鈥� relationship to horses

Nearly a million years ago in what is now southern England, human ancestors called Homo heidelbergensis were creating tools from horse bones. Fast forward to about 30,000 years ago, and humans across Europe and northern Eurasia were regularly painting horses on cave walls and carving their likenesses from bone and ivory.

鈥淭he connection between people and horses is among the most ancient connections that we have with the animal world,鈥� says William Taylor, an assistant professor of anthropology at the 精品SM在线影片 and curator of archaeology for the 精品SM在线影片 Museum of Natural History.

But Taylor says it鈥檚 what happened about 4,000 years ago that really changed things. That鈥檚 when people living in the grasslands near the Black Sea first domesticated horses.

William Taylor, a 精品SM在线影片 assistant professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology for the 精品SM在线影片 Museum of Natural History, notes that "the connection between people and horses is among the most ancient connections that we have with the animal world.鈥�

And when that happened, Taylor says the effect on the world and the centuries that followed was not a gradual development 鈥渂ut a sudden jolt, a shock to the system鈥� that influenced nearly every aspect of human life鈥時evolutionizing things like transportation, agriculture and warfare.

鈥淎fter domestication, horses spread like wildfire, stampeding into new societies, creating new partnerships with people that shook up the structure of the ancient world almost everywhere they went,鈥� he explains. 

It鈥檚 just one of the many insights in Taylor鈥檚 new book , available Aug. 6. Taylor鈥檚 book also has received the spring 2024 Kayden Book Award from the 精品SM在线影片 College of Arts and Sciences, with a $5,000 award given annually to a book representing excellence in history and the arts.

In the book, Taylor offers a broad swath of the horse-human connection along with new findings based on more than a decade of researching horse domestication and archeological fieldwork around the globe鈥昳n places like the Eurasian steppes, the mountains of inner Asia, the pampas of Argentina and the Great Plains of North America.

鈥淭hese are places and cultures that have had a tremendous impact on human history, but factors like low population densities, tough weather, difficult fieldwork, lack of written records and bias from written records that do exist have all helped keep that story from being properly integrated into the bigger picture,鈥� Taylor says.

Breaking new ground

Taylor is helping break new ground with his scientific perspective on horse domestication, the timing and origins of which scholars have argued over for decades. Taylor says his book tells 鈥渁 very different narrative鈥� about the origins of horse domestication, one that鈥檚 grounded in interdisciplinary science. 

One of the book鈥檚 main threads, he says, is to understand that nearly all of the most important facts about horses can be told well only by combining other kinds of information with archaeology.

William Taylor's book Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History has received the spring 2024 Kayden Book Award from the 精品SM在线影片 College of Arts and Sciences.

鈥淭he book relies first and foremost on the archaeological record, and to pair the most cutting-edge and up-to-date scientific information with all the other insights we gain from things like ecology, evolutionary biology, oral traditions, historical records and everything in between.鈥�

The book connects this new understanding of horse domestication with new insights into the timing of key innovations, including the origins of horse cavalry and equipment like the saddle and stirrup, which seem to be 鈥渃losely intertwined with cultures from the steppe,鈥� Taylor says. 

One of Taylor鈥檚 newest findings is the role ancient people in Mongolia played in innovating the saddle and the stirrup, two technologies that Taylor says most people take for granted today, but which really revolutionized what people could do while mounted.

鈥淪addles and stirrups allowed folks to do all sorts of things on horseback that were harder before, like staying mounted with heavy armor, bracing for impact with heavy weapons like lances or standing in the saddle for archery. Our recent collaborative scholarship shows that Mongolian cultures were doing this by the 4th or 5th centuries.鈥�

To understand Taylor鈥檚 interest in horses, he says it helps to look at his own history. 鈥淚 first became interested in the human-horse story as a way of understanding my family and their own past,鈥� he says.

His grandfather was a cowboy, and Taylor鈥檚 dad grew up with horses, too. Taylor is from the first generation in his family that didn't grow up with horses.

鈥淪o, when I started studying the ancient world, I was immediately drawn to understanding horses. One of my first experiences as a student was getting to study the skeleton of a 2,500-year-old horse. That鈥檚 when I became really curious about all the things we could learn about people through the study of horse remains. Living in places like Montana or Colorado today, we are still in a legacy horse culture.鈥�

Did you enjoy this article?  Passionate about anthropology? Show your support.

Related Articles

精品SM在线影片 Assistant Professor William Taylor鈥檚 new study offers a telling glimpse into the lives of humans and horses in South America

A from a 精品SM在线影片 researcher, conducted with colleagues in Argentina, sheds new light on how the introduction of horses in South America led to rapid economic and social transformation in the region.

William Taylor, an assistant professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology in the Museum of Natural History at 精品SM在线影片, says this research shows that the story about people and horses in the Americas is 鈥渇ar more dynamic鈥� than previously thought.

精品SM在线影片 researcher William Taylor has found that once horses were introduced to South America, horse-based ways of life spread rapidly across the continent.

鈥淥ur findings from Patagonia show that the spread of horses, the emergence of horse-based ways of life in the southernmost areas of South America, was both rapid and largely independent of European control,鈥� says Taylor, who has studied horses since 2011. 鈥淔rom almost their first arrival on the shores of the Americas in the 16^th century, horses had an impact at a continental scale.鈥�

Juan Bautista Belardi, a professor of archaeology at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral in Argentina and Taylor鈥檚 research colleague, and his team in Patagonia conducted all the field research at a canyon site called Chorrillo Grande 1 in southern Argentina. They unearthed the remains of an A贸nikenk/Tehuelche campsite (people of the Indigenous Tehuelche nation traditionally used horses for hunting, transportation, warfare and food) that included horse bones, artifacts and metal ornaments.

Belardi says he believes the Chorrillo Grande 1 camp is just one of the many archaeological sites spread across the canyon.

鈥淎s far as we can tell, the human occupation of the canyon started at least around 3,500 years ago,鈥� Belardi says. 鈥淭his is very important, because it allows us to model how hunter-gatherers used the landscape.鈥�

An introduction to horses

Taylor and his colleagues at 精品SM在线影片 then used DNA sequencing, radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis on the items Belardi鈥檚 team uncovered.

鈥淭he use of genetic and isotopic data showed a life history of the horses, where they were raised and their mobility between valleys,鈥� Belardi says. 鈥淗orses changed the way hunter-gatherers used the landscape and, of course, this has had great influences on social and ideological life.鈥� 

Artifacts found at the Chorrillo Grande 1 site include Venetian glass beads (top), horse bones and teeth (middle) and metal artifacts including nails and ornaments (bottom). Photos: Juan Bautista Belardi

Taylor and Belardi say that when hunter-gathers first encountered horses, they were quick to begin using them.

鈥淭he advantages clearly showed up as soon as people had horses鈥攖he chance to save energy riding them, to extend the radius of hunting parties, less time needed to find prey and the ease to transport things, among others,鈥� Belardi says. 鈥淧lus, horses could be consumed and their hides used. It was a great change that impacted all economic and social aspects of life in Patagonia.鈥�

Taylor says horses reshaped the landscape of the ancient world by connecting people across vast distances; by transforming the grasslands into thriving cultural, economic and political centers; and during colonization, they helped maintain sovereignty for many peoples around the world.

鈥淓ven in 2023, these roles and impacts are still visible just under the surface of the world around us,鈥� Taylor says. 

Taylor first became interested in studying what he calls the 鈥渉uman-horse story鈥� as a way of understanding his family and its past.

鈥淢y grandfather was a cowboy, and my dad grew up with horses, but I'm from the first generation in my family that didn't,鈥� Taylor says. 鈥淪o, when I got into the study of the ancient world, I was immediately drawn to understanding people and horses.鈥�

One of his first experiences as a student was studying the skeleton of a 2,500-year-old horse. 鈥淎fter that, I became curious about everything I could learn about people by studying horse remains. Living in places like Montana or Colorado today, we鈥檙e still in a legacy horse culture.鈥�

He also has a book coming out later this year from the University of California Press, telling the global history of the human-horse story called Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History. 

Taylor says he views this latest research as 鈥渘ot yet completed鈥� and hopes that the study will serve as a platform for launching researchers toward a wider investigation of the role of horses in ancient Argentina and South America.

鈥淲e hope to build on this work to continue to collaboratively explore the role of horses in shaping life in Patagonia and Argentina,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd connect this record with our research in other parts of the ancient world.鈥� 

Did you enjoy this article?  Passionate about anthropology? Show your support.

Related Articles

Book description: The museum has become a vital strategic space for negotiating ownership of and access to knowledges produced in local settings. Museum as Process presents community-engaged "culture work" of a group of scholars whose collaborative projects consider the social spaces between the museum and community and offer new ways of addressing the challenges of bridging the local and the global.

Museum as Process explores a variety of strategies for engaging source communities in the process of translation and the collaborative mediation of cultural knowledges. Scholars from around the world reflect upon their work with specific communities in different parts of the world 鈥� Australia, Canada, Ghana, Great Britain, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States. Each global case study provides significant insights into what happens to knowledge as it moves back and forth between source communities and global sites, especially the museum. Museum as Process is an important contribution to understanding the relationships between museums and source communities and the flow of cultural knowledge.

Publication date: Aug. 26, 2014

Publisher:

Amazon.com:

Related Articles

Clark family鈥檚 Navajo rug auction has supported CU Museum of Natural History for more than 30 years

Start unraveling the annual 100 Navajo Rugs silent auction, one of the longest-running, most successful fundraisers at the Museum of Natural History at the 精品SM在线影片, and you鈥檒l eventually come to 鈥� Pepsi Cola.

It鈥檚 quite a yarn.

Harry Jackson Clark Sr.

Back in 1957, Harry Jackson Clark Sr., son of two influential early residents of Durango, Colo., closed his late father鈥檚 historic hardware store in response to the closing of the area鈥檚 uranium mines. In need of a job, he approached the man who owned the Pepsi distributorship for southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico, including a large swath of the Navajo Nation.

鈥淭he guy knew my father had grown up with his father (Fred Clark) going out on the Navajo reservation every weekend and camping with traders,鈥� says Harry Jackson Clark II (Jour鈥�73), who goes by his middle name.

Fred Clark got the job. On his first day, he drove more than 100 miles south into the New Mexico desert to collect a past-due account at the Two Grey Hills Trading Post, only to find the store deserted, its shelves all but empty. The trader had no money to pay him, but invited him into the back room for a drink.

Clark found nearly every surface in the room draped with hand-woven wool rugs and blankets, which the trader had been accepting as payment for goods (including Pepsi). Every trader on the reservation seemed to have no money, but plenty of rugs.

鈥淏ack in the 鈥�50s, Navajo rugs weren鈥檛 really considered the art forms they are today,鈥� his son says. 鈥淏ut (my father) decided to trade his account receivable for $1,000 worth of rugs.鈥�

People fly in from all over, California, Indiana, Florida, just to come in for the day. The sale also supports many weavers and Navajo traditions. Most weavers are older; many are in their 80s or 90s.鈥�

Clark Sr. took those first rugs 鈥� which are not part of the CU Museum鈥檚 collection 鈥� back home and began selling them to friends to cover the costs of the long-gone Pepsi, and an unusual, if practical, business arrangement was born. When traditional weavers got wind of the arrangement, they started coming to Durango to sell directly to the entrepreneur, and what would become the Toh-Atin Gallery was born (Toh-Atin, meaning 鈥渘o water鈥� in Navajo, is the name of a panoramic mesa in Arizona).

Fast forward to late-1960s Boulder, where Jackson Clark II was studying at CU-Boulder, the first family member to attend college. Clark II stumbled into journalism and helped start and worked on an alternative paper, the Colorado Student News, which thrived for two years 鈥� until the ad manager absconded with all the money.

Joe Ben Wheat

His parents loved visiting Boulder, and Clark Sr. one day wandered into CU鈥檚 Natural History Museum and met anthropologist and southwest native American expert Joe Ben Wheat, the long-time curator of anthropology at the museum. The two men discovered their mutual interest in Navajo weaving. It was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

鈥淛oe smoked a pipe, and he could tell more by looking at a rug than people taking one apart,鈥� Clark II says. 鈥淗e had traveled to nearly every museum in the world to photograph rugs.鈥�

Clark Sr. began to visit Wheat at his summer research site at the ancient Yellow Jacket Pueblo in far southwestern Colorado. During his quarter-century tenure with the museum, Wheat assembled one of the most renowned collections of Navajo weavings in the world, and the two men remained friends until Wheat鈥檚 death in 1997.

Proceeds from the rug auction each November support an endowment to preserve and protect the collection of rugs at the CU Museum of Natural History.

In the meantime, Clark II was a ski bum in Aspen, graduated from CU and worked as a sports writer and editor for a Durango newspaper before joining his father in the Navajo rug business. In 1983, the family, including Clark鈥檚 sister Antonia and mother, Mary Jane, built a gallery that also featured southwest native American jewelry, baskets and pottery.

As the years passed, Wheat began putting together one of the most complete and deeply researched collections of Navajo textiles in the world. In 1985, while talking to Clark Sr., he bemoaned the fact that he didn鈥檛 have enough money to properly preserve, repair and store the growing collection.

鈥淢y father said, 鈥榃ell, we鈥檒l do a rug auction for you to raise some money,鈥欌�� Clark II says. 鈥淎nd for the last 30 years, my father, sister, mom and I have done this auction. 鈥� Before my father died, he said, 鈥業 hope you will keep that deal,鈥� and I said, 鈥楽ure, absolutely.鈥欌��

Proceeds from the auction each November support an endowment to preserve and protect the collection. The endowment has raised enough money to buy improved storage cabinets and restoration of numerous pieces, including two saddle blankets collected by famed Colorado River explorer and 鈥渇ather of public science鈥� John Wesley Powell.

Mae Morgan, a Navajo weaver, is one of several weavers who produces rugs for an auction that raises funds for the Museum of Natural History at CU-Boulder. Photo courtesy of Harry Jackson Clark Sr.

鈥淢useum records indicate that the blankets were donated to the museum by John Wesley Powell鈥檚 great-grandniece in 1973. According to the records, the blankets were probably acquired by Powell in 1870 when he was visiting a number of Navajo groups on a peace-seeking delegation,鈥� says Jen Shannon, assistant professor of anthropology and curator at the museum.

Originally held on the CU-Boulder campus, the silent auction of textiles from the Toh-Atin Gallery is now held in Denver. Supported by dozens of volunteers from the museum, the auction in recent years also has featured free appraisals by a master restorer Ben Leroux and a presentation on the history of Navajo weaving.鈥淧eople fly in from all over, California, Indiana, Florida, just to come in for the day,鈥� Clark II says. 鈥淭he sale also supports many weavers and Navajo traditions. Most weavers are older; many are in their 80s or 90s.鈥�

The collection and auction offer CU-Boulder students the opportunity to work with some of the world鈥檚 foremost experts in Southwest textiles.

鈥淲e are a teaching museum, so we train future generations of museum collections managers and workers. Every year, our students enter the orbit of the Clark family at this annual event and learn what commitment, good humor and common purpose are about,鈥� Shannon says. 鈥淲e look forward to working with the Clark family well into the future, and passing on the partnership to future curators.鈥�

Clay Evans is a free-lance writer and longtime Boulder journalist. For more on the CU Museum of Natural history, click . 

Related Articles

Animals in Antiquity exhibition explores meanings humans have associated with animals over time

The desire to assign symbolic meanings to animals that share our world links human cultures across time.

Who wants to see animals in art? Humans do, as a CU-Boulder art exhibition demonstrates. Unidentified artist, Greek, Ob: (Head of Athena r., later style, in helmet with olive leaves and scroll) | Re: 螒螛螘, 454 鈥� 404 BCE, silver tetradrachm, 1 inch dia., Transfer from Classics Department to CU Art Museum, 精品SM在线影片, 2014.06.99, Photo: Katherine Keller, 漏 CU Art Museum, 精品SM在线影片

Whether rendered figuratively or abstractly, depictions of animals remind us not only of themselves, but also of the qualities and traits we assign to them. They can illustrate human traits鈥攖he coyote as the trickster, the aloof cat鈥攁nd teach children behaviors and ideals from fables.

Humans have worshipped animals, hunted and consumed them for food, and altered the natural environments of animals, all in the name of humanity.

In a partnership between the 精品SM在线影片  and the CU , the exhibition  will explore the relationships between humans and animals through the ages. The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Natural History through September 2016.

Curated by Erin Baxter, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, the exhibition is a celebration of animals in art and animals as artifacts and features about 30 pieces from both museum collections.

The artifacts span the last 4,000 years of human history and are from around the Earth, including China, Greece, Rome, Crete, Mexico and southern New Mexico.

鈥淭he earliest art in the world is of animals,鈥� said Baxter. 鈥淲hen humans for the first time made representational art on the walls of a cave, they chose animals as their subject matter. The artifacts in the exhibit are at the nexus of a variety of crossroads that link different fields and ideas and with people across time.鈥�

When humans for the first time made representational art on the walls of a cave, they chose animals as their subject matter.鈥�

Take the owl, for example. In one culture, the owl means wisdom, while an owl in another culture is seen as a harbinger of death.

Animals in Antiquity was curated through multiple lenses of interpretation. What does it mean for the people who made a pot with the image of an owl on it? What does it mean to the archeologist who found the pot? From a biological standpoint, what does the pot reveal about what the environment was like in A.D. 900 in central Mexico?

鈥淲hen they come to the exhibit, I鈥檇 like people to look at animals from a different perspective,鈥� said Baxter. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e our companions, our food, a source of labor. Animals have had incredibly long relationships with people that are both fraught and positive.鈥�

Kenna Bruner is a writer with Strategic Marketing Communications at CU-Boulder. For a map showing the location of the Animals in Antiquity exhibit, click .

Related Articles