W.Chicken people began to take on plains and mountains on the smooth backs of horses, this changed the course of history. The earliest final evidence of equestrian interpretarism dates from 4000 years ago: in the Urals of Russia, archaeologists discovered the remains of a bridle and chariot. But some scientists say that people began to rely on horses for transportation a couple of millennia earlier than in the Eurasian steppes, not far from the Black Sea.
Regardless of when this horse connection first appeared, it soon contributed to the exchange of culture, language and commerce between people from remote lands and transformed agriculture and war.
Now the team of researchers from France, China and Switzerland says that they have determined specific genes in the horse lines, which, perhaps, allowed people to start taming and installing these muscle animals. The genes that they identified began to appear about 5000 years ago and are involved in temperament, movement and method of the shape of horses. Researchers published their own results In the magazine ScienceField
Understanding the evolution of horses helps us to understand ourselves.
“These genetic changes allowed horses Become And a rapidly moving, which transformed human societies by accelerating transport, war and cultural exchange, ”says the leading author of Xuexue Liu, a post-class researcher associated with the center of anthropobiology and the genomes of Toulouse in France.
Liu and his colleagues analyzed the DNA of an ancient horse collected from archaeological places, Tracking how 266 genetic markers associated with signs of signs changed during the period when people bred them. One pair of genes known as GSDMC And ZFPM1 Also appear in other animals, such as mice, which helped researchers isolate and observe the consequences of genes. GSDMC associated with the anatomy of the spine, motor coordination and strength in mice, they found while while ZFPM1 associated with anxiety and training.
Understanding the evolution of horses helps us to understand ourselves, said William Taylor, archaeosologist from the University of Colorado Bowler, who was not connected with the study.
“I think this study very clearly shows that the domestication of horses was paired C and is probably motivated by the desire for equestrian transport,” Taylor wrote in an email. “The first horse shepherds raised horses, referring only a few things, namely their behavior – friendly attitude, aggression – and their movement/role in transport.”
Selective pressure on the characteristics, such as the height of horses, appears later in their genetic record, which suggests that earlier people did not multiply for certain coloring of the coat or Other features It is important for modern racers.
“These findings show that early equestrian transport – largely on the teams of the chariot – was probably very different from the skiing that we know today, with various values and various logistics,” Taylor said.
Taylor also noted that the results of the study show that people had little relations with horses until 3000 BC, and that in those early years, people used them almost exclusively for transport. “This is exciting and indicates to us a completely different understanding of the domestication of horses than the status -kVO.”
In the bound PerspectiveAlso in ScienceLaurent Franz, who studies zoo -archaeology and evolutionary genomics at the University of Oxford, pointed out impressive importance for the history of the very first riders, and these tiny pieces of DNA were identified by researchers.
“Although the exact circumstances and the cultural identity of people responsible for this early, intensive breeding remain a mystery, they must have had the necessary ingenuity, technology and foresight,” writes Franz. “That's probably is that these first racer began a revolution that changed the world, demonstrating how huge currents of history can include the smallest biological changes.”
More from Nautilus About horses and genetics:
“Icelandic horses have good genes“ New data indicate that their unique gait has a complex genealogy
“Can science give rise to the next secretariat?” As a “high -speed gene” test, racing and light athletics
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