Oldest evidence of horse veterinary care discovered in Mongolia

[Jovialis]

It is behind a paywall, but here is an article on the paper:

A team of scholars led by William Taylor of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History analyzed horse remains from an ancient Mongolian pastoral culture known as the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Culture (ca. 1300-700 BC). Deer stones, with their beautiful deer carvings, and their accompanying stone mounds (khirigsuurs) are famous for the impressive horse burials that are found alongside them by the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands. Through careful study of skeletal remains from these burials, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Taylor and colleagues found that Deer Stone-Khirigsuur people began using veterinary dental procedures to remove baby teeth that would have caused young horses pain or difficulty with feeding—the world's oldest known evidence for veterinary dental care.

Previous research has shown that these early herders were the first in eastern Eurasia to rely heavily on horses as livestock for food products, and may have been among the first to use horses for mounted riding. Drawing on insights from his Mongolian colleagues, Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan and Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal of the National Museum of Mongolia, Taylor argues that the development of horseback riding and a horse-based pastoral economy was a key driver for the invention of equine veterinary care.

"We may think of veterinary care as kind of a Western science," he says, "but herders in Mongolia today practice relatively sophisticated procedures using very simple equipment. This results of our study show that a careful understanding of horse anatomy and a tradition of care was first developed, not in the sedentary civilizations of China or the Mediterranean, but centuries earlier, among the nomadic people whose livelihood depended on the well-being of their horses."

Additionally, Taylor and his team discovered that changes in horse dentistry accompanied major developments in horse control technology, including the incorporation of bronze and metal mouthpieces into bridles used for riding. This equipment, which spread into eastern Eurasia during the early first millennium BC, gave riders more nuanced control over horses, and allowed them to be used for new purposes—especially warfare. However, using metal to control horses also introduced new oral problems, including painful interactions with a vestigial tooth that develops in some animals, known as a "wolf tooth." Taylor and his team discovered that, as herders began to use metal bits, they also developed a method for extracting this problematic tooth—similar to the way most veterinary dentists would remove it today.

In doing so, these early riders could control their horses in high-stress situations using a metal bit, without accompanying behavioral or health complications, which may have had major implications for the ancient world. Nicole Boivin, Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, explains, "In many ways, the movements of horses and horse-mounted peoples during the first millennium BCE reshaped the cultural and biological landscapes of Eurasia. Dr. Taylor's study shows that veterinary dentistry—developed by Inner Asian herders—may have been a key factor that helped to stimulate the spread of people, ideas, and organisms between East and West."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-oldest-evidence-horse-veterinary-mongolia.html#jCp

Origins of Equine Dentistry

The domestication of horses and adoption of horse riding were critical processes that culminated in the emergence of mounted warriors and nomadic empires that shaped world history. The constraints of horse biology and riding equipment meant that equine veterinary care, particularly of teeth, was a core component of the success of the human–horse relationship. We report the earliest evidence of equine dentistry, from the Mongolian Steppe, at 1150 BCE. Key shifts in equine dentistry practice through time can be linked first to the emergence of horseback riding and later to the use of metal bits that enabled better control of horses. The maintenance of horse health through dentistry underwrote the key role of horses in cultures and economies around the world.

Abstract

From the American West to the steppes of Eurasia, the domestic horse transformed human societies, providing rapid transport, communication, and military power, and serving as an important subsistence animal. Because of the importance of oral equipment for horse riding, dentistry is an essential component of modern horse care. In the open grasslands of northeast Asia, horses remain the primary form of transport for many herders. Although free-range grazing on gritty forage mitigates many equine dental issues, contemporary Mongolian horsemen nonetheless practice some forms of dentistry, including the removal of problematic deciduous teeth and the vestigial first premolar (“wolf tooth”). Here, we present archaezoological data from equine skeletal remains spanning the past 3,200 y, indicating that nomadic dental practices have great antiquity. Anthropogenic modifications to malerupted deciduous central incisors in young horses from the Late Bronze Age demonstrate their attempted removal, coinciding with the local innovation or adoption of horseback riding and the florescence of Mongolian pastoral society. Horse specimens from this period show no evidence of first premolar removal, which we first identify in specimens dating to ca. 750 BCE. The onset of premolar extraction parallels the archaeological appearance of jointed bronze and iron bits, suggesting that this technological shift prompted innovations in dentistry that improved horse health and horse control. These discoveries provide the earliest directly dated evidence for veterinary dentistry, and suggest that innovations in equine care by nomadic peoples ca. 1150 BCE enabled the use of horses for increasingly sophisticated mounted riding and warfare.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/26/1721189115