directional control of draft donkeys in the Near East.^57 Nose-rings, however, were
evidently still in use in the Near East 300 years after the sacrifice of the Tell Brak
donkeys, and the first clear evidence for a bitted donkey (from Tel Haror in Israel)
dates to ca. 1650 BC.^58 Otherwise, donkeys are shown controlled by nose-rings,
nose-bands, or neck-ropes. We must conclude either that the blue-green stains at
Tell Brak ca. 2200 BCresulted from something other than metal bits, or that a
metal mouthpiece was a brief experiment at Tell Brak and initiated no tradition.
Philip Kohl’s Leif Erikson analogy is pertinent again.
In the horse country of the steppe, in contrast, the invention of the organic bit
ca. 2000 BCnot only would have given riders much more control than was possible
with a nose-ring and rope, but also encouraged the invention of a light, spoke-
wheeled cart. At this point in the evolution of horsemanship, driving a team of
draft horses was considerably less problematic than riding a horse. Riders in the
second millennium BCare consistently portrayed as sitting not up near the withers
but far back: behind the horse’s rib cage, in what is often called the “donkey seat”
(because donkeys have very low withers, and can easily pitch a rider forward,
riders tended to sit closer to the donkey’s rear). Such a seat on horseback, as
characterized by Littauer and Crouwel, reflected “a still primitive stage of equi -
tation.”^59 I have suggested elsewhere that so awkward a seat was preferred by riders
in the Middle and Late Bronze Age because they feared for their lives if their
mount took the mouthpiece between its teeth and ran out of control: in such an
emergency, the rider may have regarded ejection from the horse’s rump as his
only possible salvation. The adoption of a “proper” seat in the Iron Age, then,
was made possible by the jointed snaffle bit, which put the mount firmly under
the rider’s control.^60
Because riding was insecure, the chariot was essential in exploiting the tamed
horse’s speed. Only recently has it been recognized how important was the forest
steppe in the development of the chariot,^61 and much of the credit for this
recognition goes to Vladimir Gening, Nikolai Vinogradov and David Anthony.
Until late in the 1970s the only direct evidence for chariots on the steppe were
crude petroglyphs of horses pulling chariots. These rock carvings were hardly
dateable, and the assumption was widespread that the chariot made its way to the
steppe well after it had been invented in the Near East. Now archaeologists have
found traces of chariots in steppe graves—at least sixteen according to Anthony—
dated early in the second millennium BC.^62 Mary Littauer and Joost Crouwel, who
contributed so much to the study of wheeled vehicles and ridden animals in the
Bronze Age, responded to the discovery of the evidence in the steppe by
reaffirming their earlier argument that the first chariots were built in the Near East.^63
Their reaffirmation, however, depended on the assumption (shared by Anthony)
that since the Neolithic period horses had been routinely ridden on the steppe,
while in the Near East the only ridden animals were the donkey and—perhaps—
the onager. Why, Littauer and Crouwel asked, would a steppe dweller have
desired a chariot when his riding horse gave him a much superior mode of
transportation? The chariot was expensive, was slower than a mount, was far less
maneuverable, and was very liable to damage. These observations are entirely
42 The Kurgan theory and taming of horses