The Evolutionary and Historical Foundation of the Modern Horse: Lessons from Ancient Genomics

Ludovic Orlando (1)

1 AMIS - Anthropologie Moléculaire et Imagerie de Synthèse

The domestication of the horse some ~5,500 years ago followed that of dogs, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs by ~2,500-10,000 years. By providing fast transportation and transforming warfare, the horse had an impact on human history with no equivalent in the animal kingdom. Even though the equine sport industry represents a considerable economic worth today, the evolutionary history underlying the emergence of the modern domestic horse remains contentious. In the last decade, novel sequencing technologies have revolutionized our capacity to sequence the complete genome of organisms, including from archaeological remains. Applied to horses, these technologies have provided unprecedented levels of information and have considerably changed models of horse domestication. This review illustrates how ancient DNA, especially ancient genomes, have contributed to rethink the process by which horses were first domesticated, and then diversified into a variety of breeds showing a whole range of traits that are useful to humans.

Mots clés: Horse; Domestication; Genomics; Selection; Conservation; Evolution

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Ludovic Orlando. The Evolutionary and Historical Foundation of the Modern Horse: Lessons from Ancient Genomics. Annual Review of Genetics, 2020, 54 (1), pp.563-581. ⟨10.1146/annurev-genet-021920-011805⟩. ⟨hal-03030321⟩