Qualla: Deriivka

Deriivka: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The evidence was a horse's skull, buried on purpose more than six thousand years ago, and for a generation it seemed to answer one of prehistory's biggest questions: when did humans first ride? At Deriivka, an ancient settlement on the right bank of the Dnieper in central Ukraine, archaeologists found a place where three-quarters of the animal bones came from horses, and where one stallion had been laid in the ground with what looked like the marks of a bit worn into its teeth. Here, many believed, was the cradle of horseback riding. The site is gone now, submerged beneath the waters of the Kamianske Reservoir. And the claim that made it famous turned out to be wrong.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Deriivka: A Village of Horses

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 3.0. Deriivka belonged to the Sredny Stog culture of the Copper Age, roughly 4500 to 3500 BC, a people of the open steppe near the great river. The excavated settlement was modest, three dwellings and six hearths, but each was packed with animal bones, hundreds of them, and around thr...

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 3.0

Deriivka: The Stallion That Fooled Everyone

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 3.0. The centerpiece was a single skull. A stallion, seven or eight years old, had been deliberately buried apart from the main site, and in 1991 the archaeologist David Anthony reported microscopic wear on its teeth of the kind a bit leaves behind. If the horse belonged to the Copper...

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Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 3.0

Deriivka: Beneath the Reservoir

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tschubby, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before the debate over the stallion, the land itself had been claimed. When the Dnieper was dammed to create the Kamianske Reservoir, the waters rose and closed over Deriivka, sealing the settlement and its cemeteries beneath a new artificial lake. Two burial grounds lie the...

Read more: Deriivka on Qualla

Image: Tschubby | CC BY-SA 3.0