Re: Random horse
Reply #67 –
Not really random, but very topical to horsedom.
Origin of domestic horses finally established
This strategy paid off: although Eurasia was once populated by genetically distinct horse populations, a dramatic change had occurred between 2000 and 2200 BC. A genetic profile, previously confined to the Pontic steppes (North Caucasus)3, began to spread beyond its native region, replacing all the wild horse populations from the Atlantic to Mongolia within a few centuries.
This is quite fascinating because of the time and the place. The
Kurgan hypothesis has been victorious the last couple decades, merging a Yamnaya culture (archeological findings), a language group (Indo-European), and genetic mapping into a fairly coherent picture. And domestication of horses (not yet horseriding, but wagons) has been the hypothesized driver that spread these Ukrainians (more or less) over wide parts of Eurasia.
And the place fits perfectly, but time not so much. 4200 ya is at least a millennium
after the Proto-Indo-European speaking tribes started emigrating from Ukraine (or thereabout).
Now, all tame horses today can trace their roots back to these Caucasian horses, but they were not the first domesticated horses. The same team
had earlier established that Botai horses, tamed more than 5500 ya, were not the ancestors of today's tame horses. But they
were the ancestors of Przewalski's horses, previously assumed to be original wild horses, but that would be feral horses instead.
The research is EU funded by the slightly confusingly named
Pegasus project (because of
another Pegasus project)
Topic: Random horse