Much of human history was made astride, or beside, a horse. The animal’s stolid speed and strength powered massive migrations of people, pulled plows that transformed agriculture and revolutionized warfare. Now, researchers have pinpointed where and when horse and human history became intertwined.
Ancient DNA reveals that the modern domestic horse originated on the vast landscape of what is now southwestern Russia.
Orlando and colleagues analyzed ancient DNA from 273 horse bone specimens from across the continents, spanning 50,000 years of human and equine history. For most of that time, genetically varied wild horse populations were scattered across Eurasia. But starting around 2000 B.C., that variation vanished. By 1500–1000 B.C., domestic horses from Spain to Mongolia all descended from the same population, which the researchers traced back to more than 4,200-year-old specimens dug up on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, north of the Caucasus region and the Caspian Sea.
Two genes were distinctly different in these modern horse progenitors and may have aided this rapid expansion, the researchers found. In studies of humans and mice, those genes influence endurance, weight-bearing ability and docility. Selective breeding by humans could have “recombined two really good factors not [previously] present in any horse,” Orlando says. “That created an animal that was both easier to interact and move with.”
Ancient DNA reveals that the modern domestic horse originated on the vast landscape of what is now southwestern Russia.
Orlando and colleagues analyzed ancient DNA from 273 horse bone specimens from across the continents, spanning 50,000 years of human and equine history. For most of that time, genetically varied wild horse populations were scattered across Eurasia. But starting around 2000 B.C., that variation vanished. By 1500–1000 B.C., domestic horses from Spain to Mongolia all descended from the same population, which the researchers traced back to more than 4,200-year-old specimens dug up on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, north of the Caucasus region and the Caspian Sea.
Two genes were distinctly different in these modern horse progenitors and may have aided this rapid expansion, the researchers found. In studies of humans and mice, those genes influence endurance, weight-bearing ability and docility. Selective breeding by humans could have “recombined two really good factors not [previously] present in any horse,” Orlando says. “That created an animal that was both easier to interact and move with.”
