Ancient Remains Of Horses Provide A Look Into How The People Of Mongolia Experimented With Equine Dentistry Over 3,000 Years Ago
More than 3,000 years ago, the ancient people of Mongolia were experimenting with equine dentistry, making them the oldest known veterinary dentists on record.
The earliest evidence of horse dental care was carried out by the nomadic Deer Stone-Khirigsuur culture in Mongolia, which existed between 1300 to 1700 B.C.
A team of researchers made the discovery after examining the ancient remains of 85 horses, dating from approximately 1200 B.C. to 700 B.C.
The horse skulls had been buried in equine graves on the Mongolian steppe. The burials consisted of megaliths with elaborate carvings of deer and large stone mounds.
Over the past couple of decades, archaeologists have learned that hundreds or even thousands of horses were buried in the area.
The researchers found that the herders sawed down horses’ teeth with stone tools if they were growing at odd angles. One of these teeth had been cut in about 1150 B.C., making it the world’s oldest evidence of horse dentistry.
In teeth from 750 B.C. and afterward, there were signs that the people from the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur culture were extracting the wolf tooth, a premolar that emerges during the first year of a horse’s life.
The wolf tooth usually falls out before a horse turns three years old. If it doesn’t, its presence can be very painful for a horse wearing a metal bit.
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According to William Taylor, the lead researcher of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow of archaeology with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, veterinary dental care seems to be directly correlated to horseback riding and herding in the region.
Before the use of metal bits, the people of the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur culture used bits made out of rope, leather, bone, or wood. There is no proof that the organic bits caused damage to the horses’ mouths, even when they still had wolf teeth.
Metal bits first appeared in Mongolia around 800 B.C. They helped riders control horses more precisely, which may have led to horses being used in warfare and for long-distance travel.
However, the metal bits would’ve caused painful chafing in the mouths of horses with wolf teeth and likely gave rise to health and behavioral problems in the horses. So, a tradition of care was developed.
“It’s really shocking and cool that [wolf-tooth removal] directly accompanied the introduction of metal bits,” said Taylor. “It speaks to not just this passive tradition of health care, but instead one that was actively responding to the new challenges of the day.”
The discovery was made with the help of Mongolian archaeologists, some of whom grew up as herders in the countryside.
They provided valuable knowledge about the region’s history of animal health care. To this day, veterinarians still remove wolf teeth from horses.
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