For decades, archaeologists believed that horses did not arrive on the Mediterranean island of Sicily until around the beginning of the first millennium B.C. The horse, long recognized as a revolutionary force in the story of human civilization, was thought to have come late to this island crossroads of the ancient world. But now, thanks to the work of Davide Tanasi, a professor at the University of South Florida, that story has changed dramatically.
Tanasi and his colleagues have uncovered compelling evidence that horses were not only present in Sicily a thousand years earlier than previously thought, but that they also played a central role in the diets and rituals of early Bronze Age communities. Published in the journal PLOS One, these findings demand a sweeping re-examination of how scholars understand both the spread of domesticated horses and the cultural life of Bronze Age Sicilian societies.
A Discovery That Challenges Centuries of Assumptions
The horse has always been more than just an animal. Across civilizations, it transformed agriculture, transportation, warfare, hunting, economy, and even religion. To discover that Sicilian communities were using horses as far back as the third millennium B.C. upends the carefully constructed models of how domesticated animals moved through Europe and the Mediterranean.
“The horse was one of the most transformative animals in ancient civilizations,” Tanasi explained. “To prove that the indigenous of Sicily had access to horses 1,000 years before what was traditionally believed has enormous repercussions and substantially alters existing models of horse domestication, utilization and dietary practices.”
This discovery means that what historians once believed about the island’s connections to the broader Mediterranean world must be reconsidered. Sicily was not an isolated outpost waiting for horses to arrive from the East—it was a dynamic hub of cultural exchange, where new practices and rituals involving horses were taking root far earlier than anyone imagined.
Traces of Horses in Ritual and Food
The evidence comes from a site near the base of Sicily’s Polizzello mountain, excavated by Tanasi in 2005. At the time, archaeologists uncovered an impressive assemblage of pottery fragments, including footed vessels, pitchers, cups, and a particularly large pedestal basin. These vessels bore signs of ritual use, suggesting communal gatherings and ceremonial practices.
For years, however, the pottery’s organic residues remained a mystery. Technology was simply not advanced enough to identify what substances might once have filled these vessels. Tanasi, unwilling to risk premature conclusions, set the samples aside in storage. He turned his attention to other groundbreaking work, including the discovery of prehistoric wine residues deep within Monte Kronio and the identification of hallucinogenic compounds in an ancient Egyptian drinking cup.
But in 2024, the timing was finally right. Equipped with state-of-the-art proteomic analysis at USF’s Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx), Tanasi and his team revisited the Sicilian samples. What they found would rewrite history.
The analysis revealed a clear biomolecular signature of horse products, most notably equine serum albumin—a protein abundant in horse blood. The vessels, in other words, once held meals prepared from horse meat. This was not incidental; it appears to have been central to the community’s shared rituals.
According to Tanasi, the large pedestal basin likely contained a horse-meat-based stew. During ceremonies, participants may have ladled portions into smaller bowls before consuming them together, perhaps accompanied by prayers, chants, or dances. Ethnographic parallels suggest these feasts were more than meals; they were communal rites that bound people together through food, ritual, and symbolism.
The discovery of a terracotta phallus at the site strengthens the interpretation of ritual performance, pointing to practices centered on fertility and renewal. Horses, it seems, were not just animals to be consumed—they carried symbolic weight in ceremonies that likely blended sustenance with spirituality.
A Thousand-Year Leap in Understanding
The revelation that Sicilian communities were eating and ritually using horse meat in the early Bronze Age shifts the timeline of Mediterranean history in profound ways. Until now, scholars assumed that horses only arrived on the island around 1000 B.C., perhaps brought by newcomers or through long-distance trade. The new evidence forces a reconsideration of when—and how—horses entered Sicily.
This discovery also deepens our understanding of how early societies in the central Mediterranean engaged with one another. The presence of horses suggests more robust trade networks, cultural exchanges, and technological transfers than previously assumed. The people of Sicily were not passive recipients of outside influence; they were active participants in shaping the broader currents of Bronze Age life.
As Tanasi himself put it, “Thousands and thousands of pages that have been written now have to be revised and rewritten because we found the missing piece.”
Technology Unlocks the Past
What makes this story especially powerful is how modern technology brought the ancient world back to life. Two decades ago, the traces of horse proteins clinging to those fragments of pottery were invisible to science. It took patience, persistence, and the willingness to wait for analytical tools to catch up with curiosity.
When proteomic analysis finally revealed the truth, the result was nothing less than a breakthrough. The finding reminds us that archaeology is not just about the moment of excavation. Sometimes, the most important discoveries are waiting quietly in storage rooms, waiting for the right eyes—and the right machines—to uncover their secrets.
Horses, Humans, and the Shared Story of Civilization
The story of horses is inseparable from the story of humanity. Across continents and centuries, horses carried warriors into battle, pulled carts of grain, and became symbols of power, fertility, and the divine. To know that this bond between humans and horses reached Sicily earlier than imagined adds a new chapter to an already rich narrative.
For the people of early Bronze Age Sicily, horses were not only animals to be used but beings that shaped communal life and ritual practice. They were food, symbol, and sacred participant in ceremonies that touched the deepest aspects of human existence.
More information: Davide Tanasi et al, Unearthing prehistoric diets: First evidence of horse meat consumption in Early Bronze Age Sicily, PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0330772
