Researchers pose revolutionary theory on horse evolution
In the science of studying horses – hippology – revolutionary changes can occur. The researchers from 14 countries, including Russian, French and Kazakh geneticists, who studied more than eight dozen genomes of ancient and modern horses, posed revolutionary theory on horse evolution.
The Przewalksi's horse was believed to be a truly wild horse breed, having never been domesticated by humans. However, the surprising conclusions of a 2018 genetic study found that the breed long believed to be the last completely wild horse species in the world is actually a descendant of the first horses thought to have been domesticated by humans in the Central Asian region roughly 5,500 years ago.
Presumably, a bit of biodiversity has been lost due to some historical processes, in that there are no more wild horses. However, the reality is, they disappeared some time ago.
Until now, many researchers had thought that the Botai culture, an ancient group of hunters and herders that relied on horses for food and possibly transport in what today is northern Kazakhstan, first harnessed horses 5,700-5,100 years ago.
Researchers have discovered horsemeat fat and milk fat in Botai pottery, suggesting these people ate horses and kept mares in captivity for milking. Markings on horse teeth indicate that the Botai tethered the horses with bits and either rode or herded them, suggesting some degree of domestication. The site is also home to lots of horse bones, and modern genetic evidence has pointed to the region as the source of domestic horses.
It was considered this way until a new study of scientists from Toulouse and Kansas universities that studied the development of horse breeding from Botai to modern horses is appeared.
For this, the scientists generated ancient horse genomes, including 20 from Botai and 7 from Przewalksi's horses and compared to ancient and modern horse genomes.
According to new data, all Eurasian horses dated from 4,000 years to present only show 2.8 percent of Botai-related ancestry. Therefore, the origin of modern domestic horses must be sought elsewhere.
It was revealed also that Przewalski’s horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses as many have long thought.
The new work suggests that modern-day domestic horses come from an as-yet-undiscovered stock that has been domesticated in the 3rd millennium BC and has no relationship with Botai. In addition, researchers do not exclude that the Botai horses did not survive, and were replaced by horses domesticated elsewhere.
Turkmenistan is a recognized historical center of horse breeding, which gave the world Akhal-Teke horses. Many scientists believe that the Akhal-Teke was bred for about 5 thousand years ago, and influenced many famous breeds of horses of the world - Arab, English, and other. New scientific data will deepen the knowledge of hippologists about the role of Akhal-Teke in the development of world horse breeding.
