Domestication of The Horse - Driving Versus Riding

Driving Versus Riding

A difficult question is if domesticated horses were first ridden or driven. While the most unequivocal evidence shows horses first being used to pull chariots in warfare, there is strong, though indirect, evidence for riding occurring first, particularly by the Botai. Bit wear may correlate to riding, though, as the modern hackamore demonstrates, horses can be ridden without a bit by using rope and other evanescent materials to make equipment that fastens around the nose. So the absence of unequivocal evidence of early riding in the record does not settle the question.

Thus, on one hand, logic suggests that horses would have been ridden long before they were driven. But it is also far more difficult to gather evidence of this, as the materials required for riding—simple hackamores or blankets—would not survive as artifacts, and other than tooth wear from a bit, the skeletal changes in an animal that was ridden would not necessarily be particularly noticeable. Direct evidence of horses being driven is much stronger.

On the other hand, others argue that evidence of bit wear does not necessarily correlate to riding. Some theorists speculate that a horse could have been controlled from the ground by placing a bit in the mouth, connected to a lead rope, and leading the animal while pulling a primitive wagon or plow. Since oxen were usually relegated to this duty in Mesopotamia, it is possible that early plows might have been attempted with the horse, and a bit may indeed have been significant as part of agrarian development rather than as warfare technology.