Ancient genomes revisit the ancestry of domestic and Przewalski's horses

Science. 2018 Apr 6;360(6384):111-114. doi: 10.1126/science.aao3297. Epub 2018 Feb 22.

Abstract

The Eneolithic Botai culture of the Central Asian steppes provides the earliest archaeological evidence for horse husbandry, ~5500 years ago, but the exact nature of early horse domestication remains controversial. We generated 42 ancient-horse genomes, including 20 from Botai. Compared to 46 published ancient- and modern-horse genomes, our data indicate that Przewalski's horses are the feral descendants of horses herded at Botai and not truly wild horses. All domestic horses dated from ~4000 years ago to present only show ~2.7% of Botai-related ancestry. This indicates that a massive genomic turnover underpins the expansion of the horse stock that gave rise to modern domesticates, which coincides with large-scale human population expansions during the Early Bronze Age.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • DNA, Ancient
  • Genome
  • Horses / anatomy & histology
  • Horses / classification*
  • Horses / genetics*
  • Phenotype
  • Phylogeny

Substances

  • DNA, Ancient

Associated data

  • Dryad/10.5061/dryad.f9n5qm1