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Science 24 April 2009:
Vol. 324. no. 5926, p. 485
DOI: 10.1126/science.1172750
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Brevia

Coat Color Variation at the Beginning of Horse Domestication

Arne Ludwig,1,*,{dagger} Melanie Pruvost,1,2,* Monika Reissmann,3,* Norbert Benecke,2 Gudrun A. Brockmann,3 Pedro Castaños,4 Michael Cieslak,1 Sebastian Lippold,5 Laura Llorente,6 Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas,7 Montgomery Slatkin,7 Michael Hofreiter5,*,{dagger}

The transformation of wild animals into domestic ones available for human nutrition was a key prerequisite for modern human societies. However, no other domestic species has had such a substantial impact on the warfare, transportation, and communication capabilities of human societies as the horse. Here, we show that the analysis of ancient DNA targeting nuclear genes responsible for coat coloration allows us to shed light on the timing and place of horse domestication. We conclude that it is unlikely that horse domestication substantially predates the occurrence of coat color variation, which was found to begin around the third millennium before the common era.

1 Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, 10252 Berlin, Germany.
2 German Archaeological Institute, Im Dol 4-6, 14165 Berlin, Germany.
3 Institute for Animal Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany.
4 Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi, San Sebastián, Spain.
5 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
6 Laboratory of Archaeozoology, Universidad Autonoma Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
7 Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ludwig{at}izw-berlin.de (A.L.); hofreiter{at}eva.mpg.de (M.H.)

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