Horses may have been domesticated twice

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/horses-domesticated-mobility-timing

by diodorus • 2 years ago

113 145 2 years ago

jojobas4• 2 years ago

I wonder what alternative history paths were there if the Clovis people figured out how to domesticate the horse in North America. Too bad they had other plans.

chroma3• 2 years ago

Agriculture is almost certainly a prerequisite to domesticating horses (as they must be selectively bred in captivity), so hunter-gatherer tribes like the Clovis never had a chance to do so.

jojobas4• 2 years ago

Is it? There were plenty of nomadic tribes dealing with various livestock, horses included, without agriculture.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

Pickets and hobbles are things; they don't require settlements.

EDIT: I'm an idiot, there are two even simpler things:

Shish kebab is a thing; it doesn't require settlements. When it comes time to sacrifice, are you more likely to eat the individual who's easy too get along with, or the ornery one?

Rocky Mountain Oysters are things; they don't require settlements. Hence the tripartite nature of Indo-European gender: Bull/Cow/Ox, Stallion/Mare/Gelding, Ram/Ewe/Wether, etc.

AlotOfReading• 2 years ago

You're replying to an article about the Botai, whose sites lack evidence for domesticated crops like other early horse cultures.

azmodeus• 2 years ago

A nomadic horse based society like the Magyars can def selectively breed horses

linearrust• 2 years ago

Horses were domesticated thousands of years prior to the development of agriculture.

Animats• 2 years ago

Nothing to domesticate in that period. Horses were introduced to North America by the Cortez expedition of 1519.

The pedigrees of those horses are known. The Cortez expedition was launched by a government and the paperwork still exists. They were good Andalusians. So North American wild horses were descended from good lines of riding animals. They didn't start out feral.

jojobas4• 2 years ago

Equines roamed North America for millions of years before Cortez and were extinct ~10k years ago, most likely by human hunting, together with the mammoth and other species.

jmcmaster• 2 years ago

Horses evolved in North America, and disappear from the fossil record along with other megafauna about 10,000 years ago.

Clovis people almost certainly interacted with horses, but likely as food.

colechristensen2• 2 years ago

The whole genus is supposed to have evolved in North America. Horses or very closely related species went extinct in NA somewhere between 6000-10000 BC and definitely existed alongside humans. It would not be at all surprising if human hunting contributed to their extinction.

teruakohatu• 2 years ago

I know nothing about horses, but I have always wondered how domesticated they are. It seems they are quite happy to live in the wild and require a fair bit of breaking in.

Compared to sheep, cattle and dogs, they seem more on the wild side of spectrum than other domestic animals.

cjbgkagh• 2 years ago

Breaking-in is the traditional approach. Horse whisperer style is more effective and takes better advantage of the horses domestic nature.

It’s a spectrum, some cattle breeds are pretty wild. Dogs are special.

One good measure of domestication would be to compare with zebras which are considered relatively untamable - as in unlike horses they’ll always maintain a violent streak. Ponies tend to be more violent than horses.

suzzer992• 2 years ago

Zebras have a tendency to bite the face and not let go. Definitely not ideal for domestication.

fl73052• 2 years ago

On that note, 17th century Sweden can report that moose make for very poor cavalry steeds.

shswkna• 2 years ago

As a counter argument, every mammal born outside of a domesticated setting/structure is quite wild. Horses may seem wild because they are fast movers.

Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature.

Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day.

throwup2382• 2 years ago

Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature.

What does that mean? Do you mean feral animals? Non-domesticated cows went extinct hundreds of years ago [1]

Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day.

What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction

somenameforme4• 2 years ago

Domestication is pretty poorly defined, but IMO it's more about a capacity rather than necessity. A domesticated dog isn't just instantly domesticated and raised outside of humans would still be wild and quite dangerous, but with training and the right environment can be just another family member.

By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them. This is why you'll still have things like a cat just randomly attack you in weird circumstances and ways, but because they're tiny and relatively harmless it just makes them hilarious and weird. But it's also why people who miss out on this final nuance, and pick up lynx and similar animals as pets, often end up in the hospital.

epilys• 2 years ago

You are mixing up two concepts here, that of the domesticated species and the domesticated individual animal. The article talks about the former. The latter means taming an individual of a species. Dogs are by definition domesticated wolves and depend on humans for survival in general.

the-dude4• 2 years ago

Dogs can not be trusted : never leave an infant/toddler alone with them.

lukan4• 2 years ago

"By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them"

Of course you can. A small tiger won't sleep on your couch and remembers not to make a mess in the house. And when a small tiger attacks you, it can still be dangerous. There are still wild cats around here (in europe) - and they would not get that tame so easily.

(Also you can teach cats some commands, it is just way more work and the commands won't work all the time)

bryanrasmussen• 2 years ago

individual members of a species are individuals, that you can have individual cats that are aggressive does no invalidate the domestication of the entire species.

also attacking in play is different than attacking, so that should be considered.

gnulinux• 2 years ago

I really wonder people who say these things ever owned a cat. I cannot see how cats are "less capable of living with humans albeit they're less dangerous". My anecdotes show:

* Cats absolutely can be obedient with training. I've been clicker training my cat for years and he can do any trick a dog can do. He also understands his name. I tested this many many times by yelling random words, seeing him continue sleeping, then yelling his name, causing him to jump and run towards me.

* Cats can be trained not to attack at hands like dogs. This is called "cat inhibition" and it's standard practice for cat owners, all good cat owners must know and practice inhibition training.

* Cats clearly prefer sitting next to humans and sleep close to them. If you never experienced this you never lived with a cat long term. It's actually fascinating, when a cat is "sleeping" they're actually not sleeping in a human sense, it's a particularly light sleep. They're still ready to hunt. What most cat owners will see is that when your cat is sleeping next to you, and you suddenly change the room to clean dishes or use the bathroom, your cat will get up and sleep somewhere close to you. Although a human interprets this as cat being lazy, they're exhibiting hypersocial behavior for their species.

* Cats are not weak. Have you ever fought a cat? I did. I'm a full sized human male who weight trains regularly and my cat can barely overpower me if he puts all his power. Go watch some feral cat vet videos, you'll see cats require a strongman sized vet to be fully seized (and rarely some still get away). An adult cat will have no problem overpowering a human female. If you think "cats are attacking their owners" you seriously have no idea how incredibly powerful these creatures are. When a cat slaps you or whatever they're merely warning you in a "polite" way (and, as explained before this is a sort of behavior that can usually be curbed with training)

QuantumGood2• 2 years ago

I pay attention to my cats. They don't bite me without me knowing in advance. Even people who've had cats for decades get bit more than I do. I don't understand why people don't pay that much attention to other people or pets. There's a lot going on that you can be aware of if you make an effort.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

If you ever wrangle camels (or, for that matter, even shetties!) you may start to appreciate how domesticated horses are.

dr_dshiv• 2 years ago

You can tell by their pointed ears. Further domestication might make their ears floppy.

Here’s a nice article about the biological basis of domestication:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/

markb139• 2 years ago

I know very little about horses, but find myself surrounded by them thanks to my wife’s interests. We have a horse who is quiet natured and well behaved. But, the fight or flight instinct wakes up very quickly and he’s 600kg.

ETH_start• 2 years ago

I'm not very educated on the topic, but my understanding is that many domesticated animals possessed traits in their natural state that lent to living in a domesticated setting, like having a natural herding instinct. The animals that didn't have said traits were simply never integrated into human agriculture, and thus never came to be considered "domesticated".

But that doesn't address your point about horses seeming to be happy to live in the wild, which would indicate that horses have seen less change from their pre-domestication state than other domestic animals have.

Maybe their role in human societies, as transportation and draft animals, didn't require them to lose as many of the traits of their wild ancestors, as other domestic animals did?

ivanhoe5• 2 years ago

Well no one ever organized a horse fights, but bull fights were quite popular through-out the Europe. And even goats are far from friendly, unless they're accustomed to having a lot of people around. Pretty much any farm animal that's used to being handled by one or two people max, will be very shy and sometimes aggressive (especially when they have babies) about any new face. Smaller animals reaction will be to run away form you, but large ones will stand and fight. And when a cow lowers its head to show you the horns, it can get pretty tense, believe me :)

seabass-labrax• 2 years ago

Your comment made me wonder if anyone did actually organize a horse fight, and it turns out that the answer is yes - in Iceland during the Viking Age[1]. Thankfully, people seem to have found more wholesome activities to do with their horses now, including teaching them to type[2].

[1] https://www.medievalists.net/2016/08/horse-fights-the-brutal...

[2] https://www.visiticeland.com/outhorse-your-email/

Log_out_• 2 years ago

Another interesting tidbit, cows may have domesticated themselves. We can see here in Europe where the wulfes are returning a phenomenon, were deer starts to hug civilization, to have one predator (us) scare away another. Deer self domesticated long enough may as we'll be called cows.

CSMastermind• 2 years ago

I believe the prevailing theory is that dogs are self-domesticated as well.

surfingdino• 2 years ago

I've heard cats couldn't be bothered so they made humans serve them instead /s

agnosticmantis• 2 years ago

I’m guessing it was the second attempt that really stuck.

stareatgoats2• 2 years ago

The rapid expansion of the Yamnaya across much of the Eurasian continent in the millennia leading up to the historic era is still not fully understood, or has at least not reached consensus. If horses were not the reason, what then? The reasons are probably several, but the evidence is mounting that the causes were primarily cultural: a warring people with conquest engrained in their cultural DNA, a glimpse of which we still have in the cultural practices and documented beliefs of the Vikings, among other Indo-European peoples. Incidentally, they were largely the "race" that the Nazis identified with as the "master race" which has probably complicated this type of research to some extent.

singularity2001• 2 years ago

bull carts

never_inline• 2 years ago

It's all of them - horse, war chariot, aggression, lactose tolerance.

Even the oldest books of Rigveda [1] mention "Two bay steeds of Indra". That would be 3500 years old - and they had crossed the Indus by then (if steppe theory is to be believed).

CRConrad6• 2 years ago

If horses were not the reason, what then?

They spread what, 5000 km in a couple centuries? You can walk that in a few months, no horses necessary.

nonick• 2 years ago

You can walk that much if you are healthy, have roads, have enough food and water, good clothing and shoes, there are no dangers that must be avoided and if you know what your destination is. If you have to stop daily to get food (hunting or gathering fruit), avoid or fight dangerous people and animals, figure out best ways to get along while carying whaterver possesions they had, shelter from bad weather, prospect for places to settle permanently or temporarily then it's a completely different story. It's also not like they had a deadline or something.

stareatgoats2• 2 years ago

I believe the logic was this: with horses, they would have had the upper hand in warfare against the Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers that they encountered. It's not the speed of transport per se.

aksss5• 2 years ago

conquest engrained in their cultural DNA

Perhaps nuance, but I believe the PIE people are presumed to have developed a cattle-raiding culture, which is just a raiding culture in general regardless of the wealth at hand (slaves, goods, food, etc). As an aside, I'm always fascinated by Ibn Fadlan's observation (877 AD) when going up the Volga that there was a "slaving season". That probably goes back millennia.

Anyway, in turn, some of those bands - much like the much later viking gangs - probably decided to "stay" at the places they raided, which looks a lot like conquest. Anyway, not taking away from your point, just some color. :)

hoseja• 2 years ago

For instance, ancient people from southwest Asia known as the Yamnaya...

They really hate saying it, don't they.

Acrobatic_Road• 2 years ago

we can't technically call them that. Some of their successors, sure.

randomtoast3• 2 years ago

The domestication of horses was not a single event, but a long, drawn-out process that took place over several thousand years. According to Occam's razor, it is very unlikely that it happened twice in history. I do not question the stated DNA method, but I do question the conclusion drawn here. There might be a link between the two domestications (if two or more have actually occurred) that hasn't been discovered yet.

CuriouslyC3• 2 years ago

I don't believe that. How hard is it to capture baby horses, it would happen naturally hunting their parents. Horses bond decently with people and if captured and socialized heavily by the tribe from a young age I have no doubt first generation wild horses would be rideable and could be bred.

Amezarak• 2 years ago

Yes, but the ability to bond decently with people may be a trait that was bred into them during the early domestication process.

wongarsu• 2 years ago

According to Occam's razor, it is very unlikely that it happened twice in history

Is it? Sure, if you start with "we have domesticated horses, how did we get here" then "one event happened" are less assumptions than "two events happened". But if you start the other way around with "humans lived in vicinity of a species that lends itself to domestication" then "they only domesticated it once" sounds like the wild speculation.

Even if you assume exchange between the two civilizations, spreading the idea that horses can be domesticated is much easier and lower friction than spreading actual domesticated horses. Especially with a mountain range involved and early generations of barely-domesticated horses.

rthnbgrredf3• 2 years ago

I think think the statement "humans lived in vicinity of a species that lends itself to domestication" is wrong. Horses do not lend itself to domestication, as stated earlier this process took thousands of years. No one would say, oh it just took humans a couple of thousands years todo X, well that was quiet easy.

kibwen• 2 years ago

A pet peeve of mine, but this is a misapplication of Occam's razor.

Occam's razor is not to be used to say "this explanation sounds complex, there must be a simpler explanation."

Rather, the point of Occam's razor is to say "here I have two competing explanations, and they both amount to the same thing, and we don't have any evidence of one over the other, so let's just pick the simpler one because it doesn't make a difference."

So, for example, if we had absolutely zero evidence as to the domestication of horses, and one person said "they were domesticated once" and another person said "they were domesticated twice", then it all amounts to the same thing (horses were domesticated) and we have no evidence either way, so we would use Occam's razor to favor the first explanation.

But in this case, it appears we do have evidence, so rather than relying on Occam's razor, we should just argue about the evidence instead.

rthnbgrredf3• 2 years ago

From Wikipedia "This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both theories have equal explanatory power one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions"

Both hypotheses make the same prediction and have equal explanatory power. I think just one article where they say "may have been" in the title is not enough evidence to overrule occams principle in this case.

Jeff_Brown• 2 years ago

It all seems so unfathomable to me. Even plants! Wild almonds will kill you with cyanide. Even domesticated horses are scary as hell -- what would they have been like before that? Domestic goats can kill big men -- my uncle (huge, muscly, outdoorsy blue collar guy) almost got rammed to death by one.

The only instance of donestication I really get are cats.

ElCapitanMarkla• 2 years ago

And even then I think it’s more a case that cats domesticated people

Grimblewald• 2 years ago

Humans have co-domesticated along side everything else. We are less scary now as well.

awesomeideas• 2 years ago

Are we? We kill billions/trillions of other beings per year, far more per person than we did 300 ka ago when we came onto the scene.

skoocda• 2 years ago

Horses used to be smaller.

Przewalski's horse, the closest thing to a pre-domesticated horse, is about 660lb. A modern draft horse is over 2000lb.

50 mya, Eohippus was around 20lb - the size of a fox.

tuatoru• 2 years ago

The first domestication was fire. That made the others easier. Also, humans used to cooperate

aksss5• 2 years ago

There is a great book called "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" by David Anthony, and in Chapter 10 he goes into some depth about horse domestication.

https://archive.org/details/horsewheelandlanguage/page/192/m...

I suppose as it relates to this article, the author points out that:

1) "Earliest evidence for possible horse domestication...appeared after 4800 BCE". This evidence comes mostly from cultural artifacts representing the horse, I believe.

2) Looking for physical evidence of domestication is very difficult, but two methods of debatable applicability to horses - size variability and age at death - seems to indicate 2800 BCE and more recent than 3000 BCE, respectively.

3) Evidence of bit wear in teeth provides evidence of horse-riding, which is assumed to post-date horse domestication. Bit wear is evident in teeth whether hard (metal) or soft (leather, hair) bits are used. That evidence pretty conclusively indicates that horse-riding goes back at least until 3700-3500BCE. Domestication of horses (herding) is presumed to predate this by at least another 500 years.

4) To the topic of riding coming after domestication: "What was the incentive to tame wild horses if people already had cattle and sheep? Was it for transportation? Almost certainly not. Horses were large, powerful, aggressive animals, more inclined to flee or fight than to carry a human. Riding probably developed only after horses were already familiar as domesticated animals that could be controlled. The initial incentive probably was the desire for a cheap source of winter meat." The author points out that unlike cattle, horses are able to forage in the winter on their own, making them extremely valuable as livestock for primary and secondary products.

Point 4 is in opposition to this article, and demonstrates the idea championed by the article (horses domesticated for speedy human transport) is not new, per se, but since this article post-dates the book, it should be read as perhaps bringing new evidence to the table for that theory.

Horses may have been domesticated twice

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