Study on Origin of Domestic Horses Gets it Partly Right

 

Main chart from the paper. Click on image for a larger view. 

A recent paper concluded that the domestic horse did not originate in Anatolia, but rather in the Steppe. For some reason, it ignored the possibility of an Armenian Highland origin, even though I think their own paper at least equally points to that possibility. Part of the problem may be how one defines "origin" of modern domestic horses. I would define "origin" as that population of horses which was first domesticated that led directly to our modern domesticated horse population. They seem to be defining it as the first population that was established over a large area. That is a later event and admittedly one that is easier to nail down. 

First of all, looking at mtDNA, as this paper did because it couldn't get Y-DNA from the samples, can only tell us so much about the origin of the domestic horse. This is because like today, stallions were probably used to "spread the right genes" to other horse populations. We need Y-DNA to really solve this mystery and we didn't get it. At least not prior to the Bronze Age.

Secondly, the map above, from the paper, distinguishes the "Armenian Highlands" from Anatolia. The fact is that the western part of the Armenian Highlands make up the eastern-most part of Anatolia. The Araxas river goes through Armenia and to the west side is considered Anatolia and the east side is the start of the Caucus region, specifically the Lesser Caucuses. So they are imprecise with their geography. 

But they did go to a lot of trouble to find this evidence, so let's see what the mtDNA points to, even if it is inconclusive. Then I will explain how it fits in with the subject of this blog. Look at Q in the chart above, which was the only mtDNA type found in the Armenian Highlands in the more ancient data set, and was not found in western Anatolia prior to 2000 B.C. according to the study. So this is the dominant genotype in this one area, but rare or absent elsewhere. Thousands of years later, it makes up a disproportionate share of the mares in Anatolia. It didn't just hang on, like P, it prospered. That indicates that this mtDNA haplogroup (Q) was a part of the early domesticated population which later mixed with some wild types and supplanted others. 

This later influx of diverse mtDNA linages probably did come from the steppe, but that doesn't mean that the domestic horse originated there. Rather, based on how well Q did, stallions from the original Armenian Highland domestic herds were taken to the steppe and spread their genes to the diverse population of wild mares in the steppe, very much like what the authors of the paper describe happening with mtDNA "P" in Anatolia. Then when those Steppe people came across the mountains en mass as a "horse culture" they brought large numbers of their herd with them. Herds whose parental line was from the Armenian Highland herd. That herd had already spread west so that "Q" held a plurality of the maternal lines in Anatolia after 2,000 B.C. even with the influx of newcomers

While the ancient Armenians may have used horses, I hypothesize that they were not a horse culture until the IE came back over the mountains with a diverse and large horse population. Maybe it was the IE who came up with the idea of riding the horses themselves, and not just using them as a pack animal. This would be similar to the situation with gunpowder, invented in the east but thoroughly exploited in the west. So an explanation for the origin of domestic horses is needed which explain the data from mtDNA "Q", and the authors of this paper don't even touch that. Instead they focus on the diversity of types which flow into the region later. We will not know for sure until origin for the Y-DNA line for the dominant line of today's horses is found, but what I am suggesting fits all the evidence we have, not just some of it as is the case with the paper. (Late addition, I'd like to add that the later presence of types like "N" and "L" in Anatolia that were not found coming out of the Caucuses indicates that mares later came from the west as well, perhaps via the Balkans or Greece. The mtDNA from the Steppe just doesn't dominate in western Anatolia like it does later on in the highlands.) 

Further, I think we have to discount their connection of varied coat colors to the original domestication event. Man domesticated dogs for many thousands of years before the wide range of coat colors we now see were teased out of their genomes through selective breeding. The original domesticated horse population was liable to be small, and thus not genetically diverse in coat color. Also, the nearest living relative to the extinct E. hemionus hydruntinus that they reference in the study has a coat color very much like one of the horse coat colors they say arose through domestication, despite the fact that it is still very much wild. 

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How does this fit with the Christ-centered model for early Genesis? The model suggests that Adam wasn't the first man, but rather a specially created line of man to bring the Logos of God into humanity via the Messiah. Scripture gives us many strong hints that other people were already around when Adam and Eve lived in the garden. After they were expelled from the garden, they went east, as did Cain. I have an Anatolian Highland location for the garden, close to where the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers come together. This means they would wind up near the Armenian Highlands after the expulsion. I also have a date for Adam closer to 9,000 BC or so based on the fact that methods of calculation such as those used by Bishop Ussher can only give theoretical minimum dates and the actual dates will almost certainly be older. To understand why, see..

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Also a part of the model is that the animals fashioned for Adam in chapter two were only a subset of the vast array of animals made in chapter one. Specifically, it was focused on those useful and suitable for a domestic and agrarian lifestyle. In chapter one humanity had been given a mandate to tame and subdue the natural world, and had failed. The animals that the LORD God fashioned for Adam were meant to help make up for that lost time. They were "better" versions of creatures who were already out there. That is why they were made as part of God forming a "helper" for Adam. Even though the LORD God was playing a joke on Adam with the process, they really were helpers. 

If this is so then this region should be "ground zero" for domestication of many if not most of our current staple animals and plants. Especially the earliest ones. And that turns out to be the case with many of them, or at best there is a dual origin with one happening in Anatolia and the other somewhere else and modern types are a result of two origins. That may be the case here with horses. Adam's clan introduced this superior livestock to the world, and their neighbors to the north took it and ran. They may be the "mighty men of old" who are mentioned in Genesis chapter six as the result of the clan of Adam's daughters being taken as wives by the chiefs of those neighboring tribes. 

The book is really about something much less speculative and much much more wonderful than this. It is about how Genesis points to the work and person of Christ. Get the book...

                                      

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UPDATE: I shared some of this on a science blog (Eurogenes) where the researcher who runs the place is a strong advocate of the importance of Steppe cultures. He advocates for the only serious alternative to an Anatolian origin for the domestic horse, and that is a Steppe origin. He cited a study, my first link below, which he said proved that the Steppe Cultures were the origin for the modern horse line of stallions (which are all haplogroup Y-HT-1). My reply is below:

Thank you for that link. The Wutke et al study on stallion diversity which was the first link on your piece. As predicted, stallion diversity dropped dramatically while mare genetic diversity remained much higher, consistent with what I said (and is commonly known to be true) about using stallions to breed herds. 

Maybe a part of why we are not seeing this the same way is the precise question being asked. I am focused on the origin (not just the process of genetic domination) of the extant population of domestic horses today. There is no doubt, and the Wutke study supports this, that Steppe and Eastern European populations were essential to spreading the Y-HT-1 chromosome of horses today and making it what it is- the last haplogroup of surviving domestic horses. 

But does the Wutke study support the idea that this haplogroup originated in the Steppe? It does not. This quote from the study makes that clear "Haplotype Y-HT-1, on the other hand, which dominates in present-day stallions, was only detected later than 2200 BCE. Although its estimated age roughly correlates with the onset of domestication (3500 BCE; Fig. 4), this haplotype only started to become more frequent during later periods. All analyses indicate low Y-HT-1 frequency before 2200 BCE (fig. S1). However, the first time bin (>2200 BCE) only includes samples from Europe, with the easternmost samples falling on the longitude of the Black Sea (Fig. 2). Accordingly, Y-HT-1 could have been present with higher frequencies at that time in populations from further East."

They don't have the samples to say where the line leading to today's domestic horse (male side) originated. It was such a superior line that it is the sole surviving domestic haplogroup today, yet it lingered for over 1,000 years after its origin in a small population somewhere ("All analyses indicate low Y-HT-1 frequency before 2200 BCE"). After that it explodes and soon the other domestic lines are extinct, and it was in the Balkans early too. (If you look at figure 2 from the paper) The expansion did not seem to be centered on the Steppe.

To me, this evidence points to the Steppe cultures finding a superior line somewhere and using it to replace their existing stock. Maybe there were two independent domestication events, but once they found this obscure line that was a better domestic horse they quickly used it to replace the strain they had. I recall that this pattern is true for other domestic animals like the dog and perhaps the pig. There were separate domestication events and our modern types are mostly one kind over the other. In the case of the horse, the dominance of one domesticated strain became complete.

The Armenian Highlands are right across the Caucus Mountains. That is what divides them from the Steppe. This is the general area in which the first domesticated sheep, cattle, pigs, and goats are found. Is it likely that the people who originated our four biggest livestock mammals today never possessed a domesticated horse until the Steppe populations came through the region thousands of years after they domesticated these other mammals? The maternal line data, to the extent it says anything with such a paucity of samples, says this region had its own successful line of domestic horse. 

I think it is more likely that a horse was just less useful for a sedentary culture in the Armenian Highlands than it was for a group of mobile pastoralists in the wide-open Steppe. Maybe they only used the horse as a pack animal in the mountains and it was the Steppe people who first mastered life on horseback. That the Sumerians called the horse "the donkey of the mountains" supports this view. So the situation would be like what happened with gunpowder, even if invented in the east, its use was taken to new levels in the west. 

The bottom line is that the question of how Y-HT-1 came to be the sole line of today's domestic horse has been answered, and the Steppe cultures are a big part of that answer. What is still unclear is who developed that line.

PS- I think the line could be older than 3500 B.C. and what this late date reflects is the origin of the small group of stallions the Steppe people brought over from south of the Caucuses along with those on the ark. In other words, there was a population bottleneck which makes the group look somewhat younger than it is. The domestic horse spread later than other domestic animals because they were most useful in a particular environment and type of culture which developed later, cows and sheep are useful for just about any culture.