Bit Wear
The presence of bit wear suggest that a horse was ridden or driven, and the earliest of such evidence from a site in Kazakhstan dates to 3500 BCE. Because horses can be ridden and controlled without bits by using a noseband or a hackamore, and such tools are used even today, the absence of bit wear on horse teeth is not conclusive evidence against domestication, but such materials do not produce significant physiological changes nor are they apt to be preserved for millennia.
The regular use of a bit to control a horse can create wear facets or bevels on the anterior corners of the lower second premolars. The corners of the horse's mouth normally keep the bit on the "bars" of the mouth, an interdental space where there are no teeth, forward of the premolars. The bit must be manipulated by a human or the horse must move it with its tongue for it to touch the teeth. Wear can be caused by the bit abrading the front corners of the premolars if the horse grasps and releases the bit between its teeth; other wear can be created by the bit striking the vertical front edge of the lower premolars, due to very strong pressure from a human handler.
Modern experiments showed that even organic bits of rope or leather can create significant wear facets, and also showed that facets 3 mm deep or more do not appear on the premolars of wild horses. However, other researchers disputed both conclusions.
Wear facets of 3 mm or more also were found on seven horse premolars in two sites of the Botai, Botai and Kozhai 1, dated about 3500-3000 BCE. The Botai culture premolars are the earliest reported multiple examples of this dental pathology in any archaeological site, and preceded any skeletal change indicators by 1,000 years. While wear facets more than 3 mm deep were discovered on the lower second premolars of a single stallion from Dereivka in Ukraine, an Eneolithic settlement dated about 4000 BCE, dental material from one of the worn teeth later produced a radiocarbon date of 700-200 BCE, indicating that this stallion was actually deposited in a pit dug into the older Eneolithic site during the Iron Age.
Read more about this topic: Domestication Of The Horse, Archaeological Evidence
Famous quotes containing the words bit and/or wear:
“A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“We long for our father. We wear his clothes, and actually try to fill his shoes. . . . We hang on to him, begging him to teach us how to do whatever is masculine, to throw balls or be in the woods or go see where he works. . . . We want our fathers to protect us from coming too completely under the control of our mothers. . . . We want to be seen with Dad, hanging out with men and doing men things.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)