The researchers identified wear patterns on the lower second premolars that are consistent with those from bit use seen in modern horses. | Photo: Courtesy Dr. Haskel J. Greenfield and the Tell es-Safi-Gath Project

If you want to know when people first started using bits on their equids, check in museums for old bits, right? Not necessarily. A multinational research group believes bit use in the Near East seems to date at least several hundred years before the use of any bits uncovered in archaeological digs. That’s because the first bits were probably made from material that wouldn’t have survived a 4,500-year-old burial.

“We believe people in the Near East were making the first bits for donkeys out of organic material—possibly bone, but more likely leather or rope,” said Haskel J. Greenfield, PhD, anthropological archaeologist and professor at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada. “Bone would have been harder to shape into a bit, but the softer materials would have molded to the donkey’s mouth.”

The bone, leather, or rope bits would have decomposed by now, he said. But “we see clear patterns on the lower second premolars that are consistent with those from bit use seen in modern horses, although there are fewer marks than we would see with metal bits,” he added