Only recently have scientists figured out exactly when and where the horse turned from a wild animal into a tame one.
“Horses are the animals that changed history,” says Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at Paul Sabatier University in France.
Today there are hundreds of horse breeds.Despite their differences, they are all Equus caballus, the family that today includes donkeys, zebras and wild Przewalski's horses from Central Asia. Although some taxonomists prefer the name Equus ferus for wild horses. In addition, the classification of Przewalski's horses may vary.
Until that very first view of Equus, there is a longchain of evolution. But until recently, researchers did not know when people appeared in the history of horses, or, conversely, the first domesticated horse appeared in human life. All E. caballus bones look almost the same, whether they are wild or domesticated. Therefore, it was difficult to answer the question of where and when people first domesticated horses.
Today there has been a revolution in the study of DNA, andnew methods are being used to study ancient and modern creatures. Using the same approach, scientists have learned a lot about the history of Equus caballus. They traced how ancient wild horses exchanged genes as they passed through the Bering Strait between Asia and North America. They also revealed the amazing history of Przewalski's horse.
How did we find out about the first horses?
Researchers analyzed over 250 genomesancient horses. By studying fossil bones and teeth, paleontologists have traced horses back to about 50 million years ago. They came up with a dog-sized hoofed creature called the Hyracotherium. The genus Equus as we know it probably originated between 4 and 4.5 million years ago on the continent that would become North America. This was long before the appearance of the Homo lineage, which would not appear until a million years later.
"It's great that this big piece of the puzzle is aboutwhere horses actually came from has been solved,” says Jessica Petersen, an animal geneticist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. On the other hand, she noted that the process of domestication is a complex process that consisted of many events, so its details will be difficult to reveal.
How did ancient horses live?
To understand this, one must go back to the lateThe Pleistocene is 11,700–129,000 years ago. Then the horses trotted back and forth between Asia and America along the current Bering Strait. The line leading to modern domestic horses and Przewalski's wild horses split sometime in the middle of that era, between 35,000 and 50,000 years ago.
But about 11,000 years ago, around the timewhen the Bering Strait last disappeared, North American horses died out along with many other large species such as mammoths and giant beavers. It is now difficult to determine exactly what was the cause - climate, hunting, or a combination of both, says Alisa Vershinina, a geneticist at LifeMine Therapeutics in Cambridge.
Ancient people saw horses everywhere, and,Apparently they were very interested in them. Horses are the main animal in Stone Age rock art. But there is a big difference between observing an animal and using it to move around.
Horses were not the first to be domesticated.Dogs were domesticated 15,000 years ago, sheep, pigs and cattle around 8,000–11,000 years ago. But clear evidence of horse domestication does not appear in the archaeological record until about 5,500 years ago.
Where did domestication begin?
The researchers studied the remains of horses from all overEurasia and put forward several hypotheses about when the animal was first tamed. For example, in 2018, scientists discovered a frozen mummified horse in present-day Siberia. She was about 4,600 years old. Perhaps it was one of the first workhorses.
Iberia, the peninsula on which themodern Spain and Portugal, was an important center: horses have been present there continuously for the last 50,000 years. And in a part of Eastern Europe adjacent to the Caspian Sea, archaeologists have discovered the remains of horses alongside the remains of other domestic animals. Human burials began to contain maces decorated with horse heads about 6,000 years ago. Perhaps this indicates some changes in the relationship between man and horse.
But the archaeological site that attractedthe attention of many researchers, there was a settlement of 3500 BC. in Botai, this is the territory of modern Kazakhstan. According to Alan Outram, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Exeter in England, the diet of the people of Botai appears to have consisted of horse meat. In addition to dog bones, archaeologists have found many remains of horses at this site. There is evidence that the inhabitants fenced the yards in which they could keep herds. Part of the skulls had marks that looked like ax blows, and some of the teeth showed wear, as if from a bit. The researchers suggested that this is how horses were slaughtered for food and tried to curb. Clay shards contain chemical traces of mare's milk, it could be consumed in the form of butter, yogurt or cheese.
However, the importance of this find is stillhotly discussed. There is no evidence that the people of Botai fully domesticated horses. Outram believes that the Botai peoples treated horses in much the same way that modern reindeer herders treat their animals: they may have kept horses near them for meat and milk, they may even have ridden several of them. But they probably did not breed or use the animals extensively for transportation. And without enough ancient DNA, there's no way to know if these were the same horses that spread around the world as livestock.
Then Orlando, Outram and their colleaguesanalyzed a large set of genomes from horses that lived 42,800 years ago. It turned out that today's ponies, draft horses and the like have little in common with the bones of Botai horses. But the Botai lineage lives on. Unexpectedly, researchers were able to draw a direct line between these 5,500-year-old horses and modern Przewalski's horses. They are stocky animals with short, bristly manes that live in the steppes of Mongolia.
In other words, Przewalski's horses, oncethought to be remnants of a primordially wild group may turn out to be anything but wild. Rather, they appear to be feral descendants of horses, which the people at Botai may have been able to handle. But eventually we lost control.
This means that we still do not know who and how was the first to tame the horse?
Not certainly in that way.Researchers continued to accumulate information about the DNA of ancient horses, so the circle became narrower and narrower. The data covered the period from 50,000 to 200 BC. As a result, it was possible to give an unambiguous answer - the homeland of modern domestic horses was the part of Western Eurasia between the Black and Caspian Seas. This place is known as the lower Volga-Don region.
However, there are still many possibilitiesfor interpretation and speculation. If scientists have accurately identified the place, this does not mean that it was the only one. Genomic and paleontological data from other candidate regions suggest that horses may have been domesticated several times, in Botai and elsewhere, although this did not lead to widespread riding.
If animals were first domesticated in the Volga-Donregion and then this trend, along with horses, spread to other regions, then you need to understand why this happened. Scientists have an unusual answer to this. The lineage leading to modern domestic horses has a change near the GSDMC gene. In humans, changes in this gene are associated with back problems. It is possible that domestic horses had stronger backs, suitable for riding long distances.
Domestic horses also had changes aroundZFPM1 gene. It plays an important role in regulating mood. There is speculation that some version of ZFPM1 made animals in the region more docile and easier to tame. These changes may have made it easier for people to domesticate horses.
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