“Taming” a horse was not so easy

according to analysis A comparison of 475 ancient horse genomes from Europe and Asia was published June 6 in the journal natureThe accelerated evolution of this lineage began about 4,200 years ago – later than previous research led us to believe – in the steppe region extending from the northern Black Sea to the Ural Mountains, through part of Ukraine and Russia. – he is called Pontic steppe. In a short time, the average gap between two generations of horses increased from 8 years to 4 years.

Not much is known about the breeders of this region and era, but it is notable that their efforts gave this line of horses superiority Until it later spread throughout the world. All domestic horses today are their descendants. maybe This effort is to speed up reproduction It corresponds to the desire to use the horse as a faster means of transportation, or as an animal to pull carts.

The first attempt at horse breeding took place 5,500 years ago, further east, in the steppes of what is today Kazakhstan. It may have ended in failureThe genomes of this period reveal that this lineage did not leave any offspring.

The team is led by paleontologist Ludovic Orlando, from the Center for Anthropological Biology and Genomics From Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse, had already determined, in 2021, that the Pontic steppe was the original location of this domestication success. Orlando also signed in 2019 studyOn extinct horse breeds, with a passing focus on how much the horse as we know it is impoverished in its genetic diversity, compared to what horses were a few thousand years ago, or even a few centuries ago.