Bronze Age Horse Cranium - Mongolia

A horse cranium from the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur culture site of Khushuutiin Gol in Khuvsgul province, northern Mongolia - excavated by archaeologists J. Bayarsaikhan and W. Fitzhugh at the National Museum of Mongolia/Smithsonian Institution. The annotations show important features: the nasal bones of the horse show deformation from a bridle noseband, and the frontal bones show evidence that it was slaughtered via several blows to the head using a small pointed ax. Dating as early as ca. 1200 BCE, this horse and others like it are among the oldest direct evidence for domestic horse transport in East Asia.