The following passage is adapted from an article titled “From the Horse’s Mouth” by Andrew Lawler (© 2005 by Andrew Lawler).
- Measuring teeth from dead
- horses in upstate New York seems
- an unlikely way to get at the truth
- behind some of the most
- controversial questions about the
- Old World. But David Anthony,
- a historian and archaeologist,
- discovered that by comparing the
- teeth of modern horses with their
- Eurasian ancestors, he could
- determine where and when the
- ancient ones were ridden. And
- answering that seemingly arcane
- question is important if you want
- to explain why nearly half
- the world today speaks an
- Indo-European language.
- The origin of Indo-European
- tongues has roiled scholarship
- since a British judge in
- eighteenth-century Calcutta
- noticed that Sanskrit and English
- were related. Generations of
- linguists have labored to
- reconstruct the mother from
- which sprang dozens of languages
- spoken from Wales to China.
- Their bitter disputes about who
- used proto-Indo-European,
- where they lived, and their
- impact on the budding
- civilizations of Mesopotamia,
- Iran, and the Indus River Valley
- are legion.
- To unravel the mystery
- of Indo-European, he taught
- himself Russian to closely
- examine archaeological reports in
- obscure Soviet-era journals
- mostly ignored in the West. What
- he found were not the remains of
- crude barbarians living on the
- distant fringes of the civilizations
- blooming five thousand years ago
- on the banks of the Nile, Indus,
- and Tigris and Euphrates.
- Instead, these peoples of the
- steppes stretching from Bulgaria
- to Turkmenistan made quick and
- efficient use of the newly
- invented wheel, mined ore to
- forge metal tools and weapons,
- and lived in substantial villages
- and towns.
- But did they ride?
- Cowboys without steeds can’t
- cover much territory. Horses
- would give any population on
- the grassy stretches of the
- steppes an enormous advantage
- in trade, warfare, and plain old
- pastoral migration. That mobility
- could be one way to explain the
- spread of the language which
- then morphed into a variety of
- tongues throughout Eurasia.
- Based on linguistic evidence,
- Anthony estimates that
- proto-Indo-European flourished
- between 4000 BCE and 3000
- BCE before dying out by 2500
- BCE. Yet clear representations
- and mentions of horses don’t
- appear in the Near East until
- about 2000 BCE. Archaeological
- evidence until recently has been
- difficult to obtain, since wild and
- domesticated horses look alike.
- Anthony realized that one
- creative way to tell the two apart
- is to look a horse in the mouth.
- Collaborating with his wife,
- archaeologist Dorcas Brown,
- he measured the wear on the
- teeth of autopsied horses. Then,
- with a small grant, he bought five
- unbroken horses and stabled
- them at the State University of
- New York at Cobleskill. He and
- his students fashioned a variety
- of bits that may have been used
- five millennia ago, made from
- hemp rope, horsehair, bone, and
- leather, rather than the metal
- favored today.
- Then the horses had to be broken
- without using equipment. The
- trainer put Anthony in an
- enclosed paddock to show him
- how to achieve dominance using
- body motions alone “It was a
- stunning lesson,” he recalls.
- After a half hour, the wild horse
- responded to his movements as it
- would have to a lead stallion.
- “Since then, I’ve been up to my
- elbows inside horses’ mouths
- at least once a month.”
- After his students rode each
- horse for one hundred and fifty
- hours, they found that even these
- organic bits like hemp rope wear
- down teeth, demonstrating that
- such wear and tear would show
- up on the molars of ancient
- domesticated horses as well.
- Taking advantage of the
- Iron Curtain’s collapse, Anthony
- and his wife visited museums
- across the former Soviet Union,
- measuring old teeth in
- dusty collections.
- He and Dorcas determined
- that horse teeth from two sites
- in northern Kazakhstan dating
- from 3500 BCE to 3000 BCE
- showed bit wear. Other scholars
- remain unconvinced, given
- the small samples. Anthony
- attributes some of that
- skepticism to the hothouse world
- of archaeozoology. “Dory and I
- are seen as interlopers—neither
- of us is a trained zoologist—and
- we have had a hard time
- getting accepted.”