Gallery 7 of 16 · About 2200 BCE

Horses, donkeys and mules

Botai, the steppe horse that conquered the world, the Przewalski's horse, Africa's donkey, the mule, and the horse's return to the Americas.

Kazakhstan, about 3500 BCE

Botai: the first horse people?

biologyhistory

At Botai on the steppe of northern Kazakhstan, people lived among thousands of horse bones. Traces of mare's milk fat in pots and wear on teeth suggested horses were milked and bridled. Later ancient DNA showed the Botai horses were not the ancestors of today's horses: their descendants are the Przewalski's horses.

Why can bones alone mislead us about domestication?

Sources: Outram et al., "The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking," Science 323 (2009); Gaunitz et al., "Ancient Genomes Revisit the Ancestry of Domestic and Przewalski's Horses," Science 360 (2018)

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

Volga–Don steppe, about 2200 BCE

The horse that conquered the world

biologyhistorytrade & commercialization

A 2021 study of 273 ancient horse genomes traced the modern domestic horse (called DOM2) to the western Eurasian steppe near the lower Volga and Don rivers around 2200 BCE. Bred for a calmer temper and a stronger back, it spread across Asia and Europe within a few centuries, alongside spoke-wheeled chariots, and replaced almost every other horse lineage.

How would a faster, tamer horse change war, trade and travel?

Sources: Librado et al., "The Origins and Spread of Domestic Horses from the Western Eurasian Steppes," Nature 598 (2021)

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

Mongolia

Przewalski's horse: wild again

biologyhistory

The stocky dun Przewalski's horse is the last horse that lives wild, but genes show it descends from the Botai herds that went feral. It vanished from the wild in the 1960s, survived in zoos from a few founders, and was returned to Mongolia's grasslands from the 1990s.

Is a feral animal returned to the wild a wild animal?

Sources: Gaunitz et al., Science 360 (2018); IUCN Red List: Equus ferus przewalskii

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

East Africa, about 5000 BCE

The donkey: Africa's gift

biologyhistorytrade & commercialization

Genomes from more than 200 donkeys point to a single domestication in East Africa about 7,000 years ago, from the African wild ass, as the Sahara dried. Patient, sure-footed and able to live on poor forage, donkeys carried the loads of the first long-distance trade across Africa and into Asia.

Why would a drying climate push people toward a pack animal?

Sources: Todd et al., "The Genomic History and Global Expansion of Domestic Donkeys," Science 377 (2022)

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

Ancient to modern

The mule: strength from two species

biologyeconomicshistory

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse; it is almost always sterile, so every mule needs a fresh cross. Stronger than a donkey and hardier than a horse, mules hauled freight in ancient Rome, pulled boats on the Erie Canal and carried army supplies into the 20th century. George Washington bred mules at Mount Vernon.

Why would farmers keep breeding an animal that cannot have young of its own?

Sources: George Washington's Mount Vernon, "Mules"

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

1493 onward

Horses come home to the Americas

historytrade & commercialization

Horses first evolved in North America but died out there about 10,000 years ago. Columbus brought horses on his second voyage in 1493, and Spanish horses spread north. By the 1700s the Comanche, Lakota and other Plains nations had built new horse cultures for hunting bison, trading and war.

How did one returning animal remake the economies of the Great Plains?

Sources: Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (2008); Taylor et al., "Early Dispersal of Domestic Horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies," Science 379 (2023)

Illustration: Urbanicity house studio (SI-generated)

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