Are you interested in the history of breeding? You don't have to go as far back as you might think. In an article published last summer on the website Seeker, author Jen Viegas states that new genetic analysis reveals how heavily humans have shaped the modern horse by selective breeding.
Not only that, the research is showing that the huge breed variations that we see today don't go back further than about 1300. "Horse domestication goes back more than 5000 years, so the fact that most horses today descend from lineages dating to just 700 years ago shows how intense breeding from that time onward has greatly affected these majestic mammals."
The modern horse ancestors came from the Middle East or Central Asia. With few exceptions, "all modern horse breeds included in the study clustered into a 700-year-old haplogroup. It mostly originated from the Original Arabian lineage of horses from the Arabian Peninsula and the Turkoman horse lineage from the steppes, or grasslands, of Central Asia."
To read the article, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment