December 21, 2010

Origin and history of horse mtDNA

PLoS ONE 5(12): e15311. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015311

Origin and History of Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in Domestic Horses

Michael Cieslak et al.

Abstract

Domestic horses represent a genetic paradox: although they have the greatest number of maternal lineages (mtDNA) of all domestic species, their paternal lineages are extremely homogeneous on the Y-chromosome. In order to address their huge mtDNA variation and the origin and history of maternal lineages in domestic horses, we analyzed 1961 partial d-loop sequences from 207 ancient remains and 1754 modern horses. The sample set ranged from Alaska and North East Siberia to the Iberian Peninsula and from the Late Pleistocene to modern times. We found a panmictic Late Pleistocene horse population ranging from Alaska to the Pyrenees. Later, during the Early Holocene and the Copper Age, more or less separated sub-populations are indicated for the Eurasian steppe region and Iberia. Our data suggest multiple domestications and introgressions of females especially during the Iron Age. Although all Eurasian regions contributed to the genetic pedigree of modern breeds, most haplotypes had their roots in Eastern Europe and Siberia. We found 87 ancient haplotypes (Pleistocene to Mediaeval Times); 56 of these haplotypes were also observed in domestic horses, although thus far only 39 haplotypes have been confirmed to survive in modern breeds. Thus, at least seventeen haplotypes of early domestic horses have become extinct during the last 5,500 years. It is concluded that the large diversity of mtDNA lineages is not a product of animal breeding but, in fact, represents ancestral variability.

Link

13 comments:

terryt said...

"although they have the greatest number of maternal lineages (mtDNA) of all domestic species, their paternal lineages are extremely homogeneous on the Y-chromosome".

I guess that arises from the fact that it's a lot easier to break in a mare than a colt, especially if they haven't been handled from an early age, for example caught wild. Horse breeders are also much more likely to keep just a few, or one, colt and several mares. Keeping the neighbouring wild stallions out of the mares would be a problem though. seems horse breeders were better at that than were the European cattle breeders though.

ashraf said...

It seems that the Botai Culture(probably proto Iranian speaking)is the one responsible of the domestication of horse.
The word mare is not IE and looks like a wanderwort (Arabic mahr)
*pulo (foal) and *ekwo too are very widespread (Arabic faHl and perhaps seyis=horse master)

Here below quotation from Tamaz Gamkrelidze& Vyacheslav Ivanov's "Indo-Europeans and Indo-European languages" book
"The Przwalski horse found in central and eastern asia and surviving to this day in scattered groups near the Gobi desert in Mongolia cannot have been that ancestor because according to recent data it differs genetically from the domestic horse the przewalski horse has 66 pairs of chromosomes while the domestic horse has 64 hence the original area of the perzewalski horse is ruled out as the center of domestication of the horse further evidence against an asian center of domestication is the lack of domesticated horses in eastern Asia in particular in china until the yin period at which point the horse is introduced from the west evidently under west asiatic cultural influence.
The onager was found in the broad steppe zone north of mesopotamia seventh millennium bc in the southern near east the domesticated horse is attested for the fourth millennium bc in culture sites in mesopotmia elam Susa and adjacent areas of ancient iran where ancient horses are depicted on vases and statuettes from hafaj near baghdad,an analogous picture can be reconstructed for asia minor at an even earlier period.
Domesticated horse bones were recently found at demirci Höyük yankkaya and norshintepe in eastern anatolia they are found in Bronze age strata as early as the second half of the fourth millennium bc the earliest written evidence for horses in asia minor is found in old assyrian tablets from Kültepe karum Kanish which make frequent mention of "rabi sisawm"=chief in charge of the horses and also sometimes mention the use of horses "sisum" for transport, that ancient Mesopotamia is one possible area of horse domestication follows from the fact that traces of horses going back to the seventh millennium bc are found in this area.
Simlar remains found in paleolithic caves in palestine evidently are those of wild horses,
cognates with pie *ekwo (horse):
Hurrian essi,Akkadian sisu,Ugaritic ssw,Aramean susya,Hebrew sus,Egyptian ssmt, Abkhaz acy,Avar cu,Georgian acu,Akhvakh icwa"

Gioiello said...

“Similar remains found in paleolithic caves in Palestine evidently are those of wild horses, cognates with pie *ekwo (horse): Hurrian essi, Akkadian sisu ,Ugaritic ssw, Aramean susya, Hebrew sus, Egyptian ssmt, Abkhaz acy ,Avar cu, Georgian acu, Akhvakh icwa".

Please, stop Ashraf!

“It seems that the Botai Culture (probably proto Iranian speaking) is the one responsible of the domestication of horse. The word mare is not IE and looks like a wanderwort (Arabic mahr)
*pulo (foal) and *ekwo too are very widespread (Arabic faHl and perhaps seyis=horse master)”.

Please, stop Ashraf!

That Arabic is the origin of everything like Jews thought that was Hebrew is a foolishness.
IE *Heky-wo- derives probably from *Heky- “fast”. Of course Semitic words have nothing to do with it. Perhaps Caucasian words could derive from IE.
To link Arabic “seyis” with IE *Heky-wo- is a pure foolishness. IE *Ky becomes *s only in IE satem languages, but it isn’t true the contrary.

ashraf said...

Those are not mine but from Indo-European and Indo-European languages book.
I did not of course write that pie word for horse cames from semitic and that could not be true since horse was probably domesticated by Iranian speakers in Central Asia and "ekwo" is probably an IE or Caucasic word.
"seyis" most likely is an Iranian loanword into Semitic similar to Hebrew "sus" and Aramaic "susya"


"That Arabic is the origin of everything like Jews thought that was Hebrew is a foolishness."

You insinuate what I did not say and what is not true, Arabic of course could not be the origin since Arabic is very recent language, however all world languages are connected to each other and stem from a single "out of Africa primeval language" comparing world languages should not provoke such negative feelings, there is nothing bad that all world languages descend from a single out of Africa language!

ashraf said...

Criticism of Ekwo being pie
"The obvious conclusion is that this “word” does not belong to the vocabulary of the PIE
language. We are dealing here with a set of post-PIE wanderworts, not with a cognate. This is
not a word that can be traced back and reconstructed for PIE. And to use the word in Mallory
(1997:101), the Greek words hippos, ippos, ikkos, i-qo, detectably and glaringly do not fit the
shape and correspondences that are found in the regular inherited vocabulary of Greek. It is
quite amazing that during the last two hundred years not a single Indo-Europeanist - V.
Blažek did, but he is more a macro-comparatist - seems to have ever emit a word of dissent
and doubt about that supposedly PIE “word” which is nothing but comparative garbage.
In the first major branch of the IE family, Anatolian, the word ‘horse’ is documented by
two different Indo-Iranian borrowings, *aśwa and the later typically Iranian-looking ≈(y)asp-.
In other subbranches, the situation is not better: Greek is an impossible word, Baltic is an
Indo-Iranian borrowing. This set of words is basically wanderworts and it is not easy to
identify the origin of these wanderworts. It has been suggested that they have a connection
with the regular PIE adjective *H1eǩu ‘fast-running, fast-flying’. From a semantic point of
view, this idea seems reasonable. In all cases, it only marginally addresses the issue of the
fictitious graphemic device . Anyway other Eurasian languages do not provide any
alternative. Another Germanic word *hang-ista ‘stallion’ is a superlative that can be compared
to Lituanian šank-us ‘nimble, fast’. And the other Germanic synonym *hros ‘horse’ can be
compared to the verb *kwer ‘to run’. These words support the theory that the regular PIE
adjective *H1eǩu ‘fast-running, fast-flying’ may be the ultimate origin"

ashraf said...

"≈H1eǩwo- ‘horse’
This “word” is the standard-bearer of the Proto-Indo-European horse. It is documented in the
following languages :
- Anatolian: hieroglyphic Luvian aś(u)was, pl. aśuwai ‘horse’, Lycian esbedi ‘horse troup’,
- Tocharian: A yuk (Gen. yukes), В yakwe ‘horse’ < (PT *yäkwe), possibly borrowed in
Turkish jük ‘horse-load’,
- Indo-Iranian: Sanskrit áśva-, avestic aspa-, Old Persian asa- ‘horse’; ossetic jäfs, Indian
dialectal form yāsp,
- Greek: hippos ‘horse’, without aspiration -ippos in compounds and dialectal form ikkos,
Mycenian i-qo-.
- Baltic: Prussian aswinan ‘mare milk’, Lituanian ašvíenis ‘stallion’, ašvà, dial. ešvà
‘mare’,
- Italic: Latin equus ‘horse’, Oscan names Epius, Epidius, Epetīnus,
- Celtic: Old Irish ech, Gaulish epo- (in Eporēdia, Epona ‘muliōnum dea’, etc.) ‘horse’ ;
Welsh, Cornish ebol ‘foal’ (< *epālo-),
- Germanic: Old English eoh, Old Norse iōr ‘horse’, Old Saxon in ehu-skalk ‘horse-carer’,
Conclusion
One of the temporally critical items that are supposed to peg the terminus ante quem of the
disintegration of PIE is the horse, the domestication of which is often attributed or supposed
to be known to the PIE speakers.
In the article I showed that the alleged domestication of the horse at the PIE stage is a
complete fiction. Nor did PIE speakers even seem to know the horse. The words related to the
horse: ≈H1eǩwo-, ≈marko- ‘horse’, ≈kul- ‘colt’ and ≈ǩa(:)pho-/*ǩo(:)pHo- ‘hoof’ are wanderworts.
They display erratic and anomic phonetic correspondences.
Three subbranches of the
IE family are responsible for the diffusion of these wanderwords in the rest of the family and
beyond: Germanic, Indo-Iranian and Tocharian, which must have been in closer geographic
contact with the Uralo-Altaic people who are the real domesticators of the horse.
This clearly indicates that when the horse got domesticated the IE family was already split
and that the individual subbranches were already dispersed. Such a late dating as -4500 BC
for a still unified PIE is nonsense"

Gioiello said...

To say this is aimed by a defamatory willing and you can understand because I don’t put you (and the Arabs if you are an Arab) amongst my friends. When you try to do scientific researches you should never forget the reason and don’t make you overwhelmed by your passions.
The word for “horse” is one of the best documented in the wide Indo-European world, the IE form is surely reconstructed (*h1ekywo-), the stem *h1ekyu- is deep-rooted in the IE vocabulary, so that it is very temerarious to say it is a loanword. You know that 55% of mankind speaks IE languages, 700,000,000 Latin languages, and when I write in English I mostly use Latin words and surely that dislikes you who cannot be so sure of your Arab world, formed above all by not Arab people, mostly IE ones. I think that European peoples formed themselves in the Alpine Region (mostly South part: Italy), their YDNA was mostly R1b1b2 (above all the subclades of R-L51), the language was that which generated Rhaetian-Etruscan-Camun in Italy and IE by those who migrated to Central Europe at the beginning of the diffusion of agriculture from Asia Minor (hg. J2 above all). Of course among all these peoples there was differentiation and continuous borrowings. Latin word “caballus” for “equus” is probably an Alpine word entered some Celt languages that could be the descendant of the same PIE word (*H1ekyw-): caballus from *cabaldos like Latin capillus from *capeldos (see sscr. kapardas), and for *cabal- see Cornish ebol “foal”.

If you have ever read my postings (many thousands on some sites that banned me: Rootsweb, “forums-dna”; on Worldfamilies under the nickname “Maliclavelli”) you should have to know that I am a follower of Alfredo Trombetti, the theoretician of the monogenesis of the language. Unfortunately, even though he knew (read and written) a thirty languages, he wrote his many thousands of pages in Italian, and a few linguists have read him. But believing in the monogenesis of the language doesn’t mean to believe in the universal brotherhood. I am R1b1b2a but, even though I have a common ancestor with the greatest part of Chinese who are hg. O, I don’t consider them my friends. I feel closer to all the Ashkenazim who are K1a1b1a (I am K1a1b1) who won, a few millions, the 27% of the Nobel prizes.
I have written privately to a friend of this forum: “I too hope that you enjoy your Xmas holidays with your family, if you are a believer. I think that 25 December was the "Sol Invictus" day. No Christ, no feast, no David no Solomon. Your ancestors Greeks were the first to discover the "science". No myth nevermore. One of my purposes is to destroy the Church and all its lies and only then we will be men and only men, like says Goethe in his Faust. And then we will be friends or enemies like our Genetics says. There are persons and thoughts I feel closer to me than other. There is no truth, if not that of Seneca: "Si cadendum est, cadam orbe concusso...". Today is the “Sol invictus” day, that many believe the Jesus’ birthday. Mankind has an unique origin, like all the living beings, but not for this we are all brothers. We differentiated ourselves and now are sometime strangers, and even enemies. Look at the thread “Human genetic variation: the first 50 dimensions” of December 01, 2010. For the last night of this year I leave you the Mbuti girl and I will very glad to pass my night with the Sardinian one.

ashraf said...

Your answer is OT and political.
The paleolithic continuity theory is not even wrong.
I put every human (except ethno,racialo and religiofascists) as my friend no matter his tongue, origin or religion.
PIE and PIE desintegration are way older (and geographically distant from the place of its deomestication) than horse doemstication, the aberrance of the ie forms is a clue for wanderwort borrowing.
Hekwe as you wrote is a mere reconstruction and was never attested.
Those 700 mln mostly descend from non IE ancestors as you know, very few can trace their ancestry to Anatolia and Pontic steppes=>language shift.
There are nearly 130 mln Turkic speakers however very few (some 1-2 mln Yakuts and Siberian Turkic) trace their ancestry to original Turks.
Hahaha you act childish despite your old age why should English or Latin irritates me, besides Latin too has many loanwords and most of Latin language descended languages speakers do not descend from original Romans (Iberians,Tartessians,Aquitanians,
Ligurians,Etruscans,Raethians...)
Those pre IE languages are more distant to IE languages than Uralic or even AA does.
R1 is mostly likely Asian as for R1b it's anatolian that diffused during Neolithic into Europe.
You are correct that most of the 200 mln speaking Arabs do not descend from original Arabs however they dont descend from IE people either but mostly from AA folks such as Egyptian, Berbers as well as Caucasic Hurrians and also Sumerians, the Latin language came lately into west asia and north Africa (with the roman empire) besides why should that be a problem if most of Arabic and Turkic speaking do descend from IE speaking peoples, it's on the contrary a source of richness.
However the IE input (west asian component) is minor both in North Africa and Western Europe, very logically as some thousands of (poorly inhabited) pontic steppes hordes of the 3000-2500 bc period(according to the pontic steppes model) could not have a great genetic input into well populated Europe+India/Iran=>what occured is a classic LANGUAGE SHIFT process.
Please avoid wishful thinking, self deslusion and blending science with passion try to be neutral and objective wich cannot be but positive for your short life,only try to understand what really happened without adding emotion because it's absurd, illogical, childish and profitless.
I am most likely around 40% west asian (proto IE) 30% southwest asian (proto AA) and 20% south european (Pelasgo-Aquitano-Etrusco-Hurro-Hattic...) and I am happy with all of them because diversity=richness and all of those languages are connected (especially IE and AA)
WHAT YOU PERSONAL GAIN IN YOUR OWN SHORT LIFE IF THERE WAS 700 MLN LATINS AND ENGLISH IS MOSTLY LATIN!!??
very few of those 700 mln do descend from Rome and Latin is full of loanwords from Greek, Semitic and Egyptian+it's alphabet is borrowed from semitic via greek!!??
PLEASE BE LOGICAL

Gioiello said...

After the outlet the reason: “These words support the theory that the regular PIE
adjective *H1eǩu ‘fast-running, fast-flying’ may be the ultimate origin" (…) This clearly indicates that when the horse got domesticated the IE family was already split
and that the individual subbranches were already dispersed. Such a late dating as -4500 BC
for a still unified PIE is nonsense”.

I wasn’t able to print the paper (very interesting you cited: but who is the author?) but I have read it. What it says is very good for me:
1) that *H1ekywo- can be explained by IE components is confirmed, even though the author seems to think to a German origin diffused after amongst the other IE languages: anyway before the split centum/satem languages but this is an useless complication
2) that the split of the IE languages is older than it is usually thought it is very good for me: the link with Rhaetian-Etruscan-Camun after the Younger Dryas, the formation of the IE languages probably in the LBK, the supposed Kurgans of Marija Gimbutas or the most recent cultures of Anthony are really due to East European satem languages. Everything is older and this is very good for my theory of R1b1b2. The totality of R1b1b2a from Turkey (see the ht35 project of Vizachero) have an Armenian surname and Armenians were IE, come from East Europe.

ashraf said...

The author is linguist Arnaud Fournet.
H1ekywo (H1 is a laryngeal lost in all IE languages except Anatolian branch and is similar to Arabic "hamza") is a mere construction and could be loanword from an unknown language into PIE or various forms of a same wanderwort as the author explained.

R1b in Europe is neolitihic from Asia (also R1a is from India) and most likely connected with pre IE languages such as Raetian, Iberian, Aquitanian, Ligurian, Pelasgian.
IE was introduced by bronze age dated hordes and only J2 fits as being marker of proto IE.
It's not possible that PIE homeland is the LBK bioculture because of fauna+flaura of PIE+the semitic+egyptian+kartvelian loanwords.
Also PIE age and desintegration could not be that old as IE languages still share important similarities and same sumerals+proto words for agriculture and metallurgy (clue for a recent age and recent desintegration)
Here below a paper explaining why PIE homeland should be in Asia (pontic steppes too are connected with asian steppes)

http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(151)mcalpin%20-%20drav%20ela.doc

Gioiello said...

Many thanks for the paper of Dolgopolsky. He was one scholar of the great Russian school of Illich Svitych, but he ended his career in Israel. This for saying that he too is politically oriented. For demonstrating his agenda he finds a few (hypothetical) loanwords of IE from AA and Kartvelian (that I could discuss) and eliminates the profound link with Uralic-Altaic saying that those are at a Nostratic level. To answer your questions I should reproduce my thousands of letters of these last years and of course I haven’t now the time and the willing. For having opposed the theory of the origin of R1b1b2 and of IE languages ( but it isn’t said they are linked) and above all for denying the origin of Ashkenazim and Sephardim from Palestine I gained two banishments. I must be happy that you aren’t a Jew and the owner of this forum. I don’t believe that R1b1b2 has come from Middle East nor that R1a from India as you are saying. This is thought of course also by Indians: as you see, every people is nationalist, but probably you’d prefer fascist, or do you apply this adjective only to Italians? We shall see next who of us is right. Re: Y chromosome by ancient DNA, I am waiting next year that of Oetzi, the Italian of 5300 YBP.
You say that shouldn’t be a problem if most of Arabic or Turkic speaking do descend from IE speaking peoples: ask Dienekes and Greeks, who lost their Empire, the half of the Roman one.
And it isn’t a little if we have 700,000,000 who speaks Latin and are genetically closely linked with us: just Dienekes has recently demonstrated that Tuscans, North Italians and Spaniards are the same thing at autosomic level and those 700,000,000 you know have different origin, but their Y is for the greatest part the own one (this is what said also Arabs about their people). And why many are trying to separate South Italians from us? Am I the only who are trying to do politics? And which means have those who fund these researches and who banned me? Probably in Italy I am the only one who is fighting for this.
If you have sometimes read me, probably you know that I don’t like who hides himself. I have done many tests and they are all at disposal of everyone. Ysearch: KV7Y2, GenBank HQ176413 (and I have a mutation that could have a medical meaning: 11204C, but a recent paper has found it in an Ethiopian cluster of U6 of about 13000 years ago and I hope it isn’t dangerous), Dodecad N° 31, etc.
You say you are 40% west Asian 30% southwest Asian and 20% south European: probably you have had some mutilation in some part of your genome. Anyway I’d like to know of you almost what I am showing of me.
Re. your speculation on the meaning of life (probably you are one of the few Arabs/Muslims that I could consider a friend, like Omar Khayyam and Ibn Rushd) I cited Seneca, a Spaniard of likable Etruscan origin like me. Read, if you want, his passage from the Naturales Quaestiones that begins “Si cadendum est cadam orbe concusso…”.

ashraf said...

Thank you for your fair play my firend and sorry for all!

The problem with IE-Altaic-Uralic is that IE (and PIE also) is connected with Caucasoid folks and have a homeland some parts in western Eurasia while Altaic (as well as proto Uralic and proto Altaic) seem to be connected with the Mongoloid folks and have eastern Siberia as their homeland.
It could be very well that the IE/Uralic/Altaic similarities are product of a sprachbund from a pre Indo-Iranian pre Tocharian IE's wandering into Siberia.(please dont forget that the first ever attested text in whatever Altaic or Uralic language was the "recent" 8 th century date Old Turkic orhon scripts and we know that already old Turkic contained many Chinese, Soghdian, Tocharian,Yeniseian loanwords=>most likely Turks when first migrated from northern parts of Siberia took many words [and probably even some grammatical features] of the settled chinese and soghdians[alphabet included])[Interestingly Uyghurs have a higher chinese component (31,8%) than Turkic one (16,9%)]
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ish7688voT0/TRCqAreq3xI/AAAAAAAADEs/HoKzH9RfHLI/s1600/ADMIXTURE_15.png


Please see the paper below (first paper is about the linguistic part and the second is about the archeologic part of the story)

http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=132494

Gioiello said...

Now I have understood where your missing 10% comes from, but don't say to Dienekes: he is less well-disposed towards Turks than me.