--- In IndiaArchaeology@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Kekai Manansala"
<p.manansala@...> wrote:

> As mentioned in earlier discussion here, the earliest horse-riding
> evidence appears in South India mostly at megalithic sites going
> back to about 1500 BCE based on radiocarbon dates (Vincent
> Piggot, The Archaeometallurgy of the Asian Old World, 1999).


The evidence you refer to above is certainly the horse bones found
at the site of Hallur in Karnataka, which have been controversially
dated to c. 1,500 BCE.

Nowhere in archaeological literature did I read that the
osteological remains in question suggest that horses were *ridden*
in 1,500 BCE Karnataka. Indeed, horse trappings, furniture and even
bits were found in some *post-1,000 BCE* Megalithic burials in South
India, but, as far as I know, nothing of this sort was found at
Hallur.

So you can't claim that "the earliest horse-riding evidence appears
in South India" (N.B. According to Robert Drews, "the first
representation of any horse rider, precariously mounted and trying to
guide his horse with a big stick, comes on a Sumerian tablet from ca.
2000 BC").

Regards,
Francesco