The Coming of the GreeksClearly the nose-ring-and-line mechanism would not have been
satisfactory for a team of horses galloping at full speed, and
representations of horses with slit nostrils 52 may attest to the
hazards of the system.
As indicated above, the bit may have been known in the
Eurasian steppe quite early. 53 Its use may not, however, have
become widespread in the steppe until the second quarter of
the second millennium. In the sixteenth century B.C., cheek
pieces for teams of horses suddenly appear in the steppes be-
tween the Dnieper and Kazakhstan. 54 Also suggesting that the
bit was an innovation (although not, of course, an invention)
of the second quarter of the second millennium is the fact that
in the third quarter of that millennium the inhabitants of the
steppe experimented rather rapidly and radically with diverse
types of cheek pieces. 55 At any rate, the bit does not seem to
have made its way from the steppe to the lands south of the
Caucasus until the late eighteenth or early seventeenth cen-
tury. From eighteenth- or seventeenth-century Syria come sev-
eral seals and one sealing with chariot scenes. Each chariot
horse in these scenes is controlled by two lines that can there-
fore be properly described as "reins." Although the type of
- Ibid., 83.
- Ibid., 6in. 59, refer to "pairs of metal loops, presumably
cheekpieces, some with traces of leather on them, from sites of Maikop cul-
ture of later 3rd mill. B.C." Still earlier bits made of organic material have
also been reported from the Dniester and Don basins and were probably
used for controlling ridden animals (ibid. ,25). The earliest evidence north
of the Caucasus for bits certainly associated with draft horses are cheek
pieces, along with pairs of horse skeletons, found in the Timber Graves
north of the Caspian Sea. The graves are dated ca. 1700 B.C. On them, see
M. Gimbutas, " 'Timber-Graves' in Southern Russia," Expedition 3 (1961):
14-20. - E. E. Kuz'mina, "Stages in the Development of Wheeled
Transport in Central Asia during the Aeneolithic and Bronze Age (On the
Problem of the Migration of Indo-Iranian Tribes)," Soviet Studies in History
22 (1983): 96—142. The Russian original of this article appeared in Vestnik
Drevmj Istorii in 1980. - Kuz'mina, "Stages," 121.
96