The Coming of the Greeks
Near East during the third millennium. 4 Because the onager
was spirited and had a nasty disposition to bite, the Sumerians
managed it with a line attached to a nose ring. Horses used as
pack animals may similarly have been managed by nose rings
and lines. And the horse, perhaps more often than the onager
or the ass, also seems to have served as a riding animal, and by
the end of the third millennium the riding of horses was ap-
parently a common phenomenon on the open steppe. 5 There is
some evidence that in the Ukraine the bit was in use as early as
the fourth millennium, 6 but its use may not have become gen-
eral in the Eurasian steppe (and remained entirely unknown in
the Near East) until the second millennium. 7
Although such indifference to the invention of the bit might
initially appear strange, there is a reasonable explanation. A
practiced rider, on a horse that knows his hand-, knee- and
voice signals, can guide and direct the horse even if the horse
is not controlled by a bit. Third-millennium riders, then, did
not especially need the bit. For the driving of draft horses, on
the other hand, a bit is extraordinarily useful, but third-mil-
lennium vehicles were not of a type that could be efficiently
- The evidence has been expertly and comprehensively assembled
byM. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in
the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1979).
- Anthony, "The 'Kurgan Culture,' " 295-96 and 301-303. An-
thony concludes that in the early fourth millennium horses were already
being used as mounts and that this innovation resulted in profound changes
in the social and economic patterns on the steppe. On the hazards and hard-
ships of riding without stirrups, see Littauer and Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles,
65-68.
- Antler cheek pieces of bits were found associated with horse
bones at two Ukrainian sites. The carbon dates for the horse bones ranged
from 3640 to 4350 B.C. See R. Protsch and R. Berger, "Earliest Radiocar-
bon Dates for Domesticated Animals," Science 179 (1973): 235-39.
- Stuart Piggott presented his early thoughts on the invention of
the bit in Ancient Europe (Chicago: Aldine, 1965), 95 and i ion. 52. For his
more recent views, see his "Chariots in the Caucasus and in China," Antiq-
uity 48 (1974): 17—18, and his Earliest Wheeled Transport, 87—90.
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