High genetic diversity of ancient horses from the Ukok Plateau

The history of horses and their domestication is always interesting. Here someone has looked at the genetics of domesticated and wild horses found in the mountains of central Asia (eastern Russia). Of course this area is of interest because some of the earliest evidence of domestication of horses originate in this area. The domestic horses were from 1400 to 2700 years ago or appx. 700 AD to 600 BC and the wild horse was from about 10,000 BC. The wild horse was determined to be of a extinct lineage of horses while the domestic horses were from different but related groups (same specie?) of Equus one widely disseminated over Europe and apparently imported to the Altai, while their was another group specific to the Altai Mountains.
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High genetic diversity of ancient horses from the Ukok Plateau
PLoS One. 2020 Nov 12;15(11):e0241997.
Authors
Nadezhda V Vorobieva 1 2 , Alexey I Makunin 1 , Anna S Druzhkova 1 , Mariya A Kusliy 1 , Vladimir A Trifonov 1 , Kseniya O Popova 1 , Natalia V Polosmak 3 , Vyacheslav I Molodin 3 , Sergei K Vasiliev 3 , Michael V Shunkov 3 , Alexander S Graphodatsky 1
Affiliations

1 Department of the Diversity and Evolution of Genomes, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia.
2 Paleogenomics Laboratory, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia.
3 Paleometal Archeology Department, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia.

Abstract

A growing number of researchers studying horse domestication come to a conclusion that this process happened in multiple locations and involved multiple wild maternal lines. The most promising approach to address this problem involves mitochondrial haplotype comparison of wild and domestic horses from various locations coupled with studies of possible migration routes of the ancient shepherds. Here, we sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes of six horses from burials of the Ukok plateau (Russia, Altai Mountains) dated from 2.7 to 1.4 thousand years before present and a single late Pleistocene wild horse from the neighboring region (Denisova cave). Sequencing data indicates that the wild horse belongs to an extinct pre-domestication lineage. Integration of the domestic horse data with known Eurasian haplotypes of a similar age revealed two distinct groups: the first one widely distributed in Europe and presumably imported to Altai, and the second one specific for Altai Mountains and surrounding area.

Conflict of interest statement
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.