The Archaeology and Ancient Genomics of Early Horse Domestication: Not as Simple as Once Thought!

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The earliest unambiguous evidence for equine husbandry relates to the Eneolithic Botai Culture of Northern Kazakhstan, circa. 5,500 years ago. However, whilst recent archaeological investigations and ancient genomics have added further weight to the case for domesticity and husbandry, it is now apparent that Botai horses are not the principal ancestor of modern domestic horses, but instead are the direct ancestors of the Przewalski’s horse. This paper presents both the archaeological and genomic lines of evidence for this finding and investigates its implications for the story of horse domestication. A key lesson for domestication studies in general is the recognition that many lineages, once important in the past, can largely be replaced. Simplistic assumptions cannot be made about past domestication events by merely projecting back from the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23667