
Mysterious origin of domesticated horses ‘turned upside down' by DNA analysis - fanf2
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/horse-origin-mysterious-domestic-dna-analysis-przewalskis-botai-domesticated-a8224121.html
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Zigurd
I think it is a good bet that more evidence will be found of domestic-to-feral
animal and plant species transitions. I would also bet that human population
expansion is less uniform and monotonic, at least in regions, than generally
acknowledged. That is, I think we will find populations that domesticated
plants and animals, urbanized, grew to large size, and disappeared due to some
crisis, and that human expansion was more lumpy, cyclic, and fitful than the
typical smooth upward curve implies.

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codezero
This article was a little hard to follow. The takeaway I got was that the
Botai horse which was considered the last species of wild horse is genetically
similar to the earliest known domestic horse breeds, so it is better
classified as a feral horse species.

Edit: see correction in comment below!

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rntz
That's almost right, but you have the Botai horse and Przewalski's horse
confused. The Botai were a human culture living in what is now Kazakhstan,
approximately 3700-3100 BCE. They kept domesticated horses, and are the
earliest culture known to have done so, so "Botai horse" would be a name for
whatever kind of horses they had.

Przewalski's horse is a population of horses that exists today. It was
considered the last wild horse (meaning: neither domesticated nor descended
from domesticated horses), but the article says it is merely a feral
population descended from Botai horses.

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codezero
Thanks for the correction. Botai is a lot easier to remember and type for me I
guess :)

