ORIGINAL PAPER The Secondary Products Revolution, Horse-Riding, and Mounted Warfare David W. Anthony • Dorcas R. Brown Published online: 21 July 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract Andrew Sherratt included horseback riding and chariotry in his conception of the Secondary Products Revolution, but his emphasis on the role of horses in warfare and on a Near Eastern influence in the earliest episode of horse domestication is viewed here as as an important shortcoming in his understanding of the process of horse domestication. Current evidence indicates that horses were domesticated in the steppes of Kazakhstan and Russia, certainly by 3500 BC and possibly by 4500 BC. Tribal raiding on horseback could be almost that old, but organized cavalry appeared only after 1000 BC. Riding might initially have been more important for increasing the productivity and efficiency of sheep and cattle pastoralism in the western Eurasian steppes. The earliest (so far) direct evidence for riding consists of pathologies on the teeth and jaw associated with bitting, found at Botai and Kozhai 1. Recent developments and debates in the study of bit-related pathol- ogies are reviewed and the reliability of bit wear as a diagnostic indicator of riding and driving is defended. Keywords Horse domestication Á Bit wear Á Horses in warfare Introduction: The Secondary Products Revolution and the Horse Like V. Gordon Childe (1957), who had imposed a new coherence on European prehistory two generations earlier, Andrew Sherratt perceived a driving force that he thought might explain the wave of change that swept across Europe between about 3500 and 2500 BC (Sherratt 1983, 1997a). Childe had seen metallurgy as the prime mover. For Sherratt it was the Secondary Products Revolution (SPR). In the 1970s zoologists had realized that the earliest domesticated economic animals—sheep and goats, cattle, and pigs—were butch- ered young for two millennia or more after domestication, so were used almost solely for D. W. Anthony (&) Á D. R. Brown Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY 13820, USA e-mail: anthonyd@hartwick.edu D. R. Brown e-mail: brownd0@hartwick.edu 123 J World Prehist (2011) 24:131–160 DOI 10.1007/s10963-011-9051-9