A Revolution in Horse Breeding Shaped the Development of Civilization, Scientists Found

11:45, June 13, 2024

Horse population boom led to human mobility and changed wars

An international team of scientists, including a specialist from the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Ural Federal University, found out how the revolution in horse breeding occurred, which led to a manifold increase in human mobility, changed the development of civilization, revolutionized wars and allowed domestic horses to spread on the planet. 133 researchers around the world examined the largest database of ancient (475) and modern (124) horse genomes to determine the cause of the changes. The data was collected over more than 50,000 years, the longest chronology (from the mammoth era to modern times) that has ever been studied. The scientists published their findings and methodology in the journal Nature.

"The domestication of horses took place in the 3rd millennium BC in the steppes between the Volga and the Dnieper. Modern domestic horses appeared there, which then spread all over the world. And today all domestic horses are descendants of those domesticated horses. But the thing is, for about 500 years, those horses existed only in one region without spreading anywhere. And in 2,200 B.C., something happened that kick-started the rapid dispersal of horses around the world. People with domesticated horses reached the territory of the modern Chelyabinsk region, Kazakhstan, and settled in Western Europe and the Middle East for about 200 years. And then, in about 400-500 years, they reached China and India," explains Pavel Kosintsev, co-author of the study, Head Specialist at the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities at UrFU and a senior researcher at the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the UB RAS.

The scientists found out that the fact that humans figured out how to increase the reproduction rate of horses helped humans and horses migrate at high speed. Several facts allowed them to come to such conclusions. First, it has been accurately established that there were no domestic horses in the Volga region, the Urals, Western Europe, and the Middle East until 2,200 BC. At that time only wild horses lived there. Secondly, they reconstructed the demographic structure, with the help of which it was possible to establish the reproduction rate of horses.

"It turned out that man was able to reduce the breeding age of horses by 1.5 times. In other words, in nature, wild horses enter into reproduction at the age of 7-8 years, but man-made horses enter into reproduction at the age of 4-5 years, so the number of individuals begins to increase sharply. There was, you could say, a population boom of horses. At the same time, the number of individuals with closely related genes increased, because people crossed horses, conditionally, from one herd. In the wild, horses do not have close inbreeding, because there is a special mechanism that prevents deterioration of the genetic composition and degradation of the species," says Pavel Kosintsev.

The population boom of horses allowed populations to migrate, beginning the rapid fanning of man and the spread of domestic horses around the world.

What circumstances caused humans to change the traditional way of breeding horses has not yet been accurately determined. Scientists believe that the main factor (in addition to the inherent desire of all species to disperse), could be the climatic aspect. As scientists explain, there was a sharp drying of the climate: an increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation around this time for a short period (tens of years). Therefore, in most territories, the population decreased. When favorable conditions came again, huge sparsely populated areas appeared, and people who had domestic horses (on the territory from the Volga to the Dnieper) realized that they could populate the free territories.

"Basically, we were able to find out how the horse breeding revolution took place, which led to the accelerated development of civilization. The rapid reproduction of domesticated horses is akin to the creation of the steam locomotive and railroads, which made it possible to become more mobile and quickly master new space. The increase in the speed of movement of people led, on the one hand, to an accelerated exchange of information, and on the other hand, to a revolution in military affairs, to more terrible wars than before. Because it is one thing to fight on foot, and another thing to fight on horseback," concludes Pavel Kosintsev.

Anna Marinovich

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office.
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