Extended pre-domestication horse lineage survival in the Carpathian Basin

Gerber, Dániel and Dicső, Zoltán and Szabó, Géza and Bozi, Róbert and Heltai, Botond István and Kulcsár, Gabriella and Mende, Balázs Gusztáv and Kiss, Viktória and Szécsényi-Nagy, Anna (2025) Extended pre-domestication horse lineage survival in the Carpathian Basin. ACTA ARCHAEOLOGICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 76 (2). pp. 251-262. ISSN 0001-5210

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Abstract

Horse domestication is a key element in history for its impact on human mobility and warfare. There is a clear evidence for horse control from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE in the Carpathian Basin, when antler cheekpieces appear in the archaeological record mostly in the eastern areas. Previous archaeogenomic studies also revealed that the spread of the ancestors of modern day horses began at this time period, although the replacement dynamics is less understood in Europe. In this study we report a new shotgun genome (∼0.9× average genomic coverage) of a Middle Bronze Age horse (1870–1620 cal. BCE) from Tompa site, southern Hungary. Our results reveal an extended survival of pre-domestication lineage compared to available estimates, and a strong bottleneck in prevailing non-domesticated lineages, compared to the surrounding areas, and provide additional information on human-horse interactions in this area.

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