Posts Tagged ‘horse’
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”*…
The horse transformed human history—and now, as Christina Larson reports, scientists have a clearer idea of when humans began to transform the horse…
Around 4,200 years ago, one particular lineage of horse quickly became dominant across Eurasia, suggesting that’s when humans started to spread domesticated horses around the world, according to research published [recently] in the journal Nature.
There was something special about this horse: It had a genetic mutation that changed the shape of its back, likely making it easier to ride.
“In the past, you had many different lineages of horses,” said Pablo Librado, an evolutionary biologist at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona and co-author of the new study. That genetic diversity was evident in ancient DNA samples the researchers analyzed from archaeological sites across Eurasia dating back to 50,000 years ago.
But their analysis of 475 ancient horse genomes showed a notable change around 4,200 years ago.
That’s when a specific lineage that first arose in what’s known as the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a plains region that stretches from what is now northeastern Bulgaria across Ukraine and through southern Russia, began to pop up all across Eurasia and quickly replaced other lineages. Within three hundred years, the horses in Spain were similar to those in Russia.
“We saw this genetic type spreading almost everywhere in Eurasia—clearly this horse type that was local became global very fast,” said co-author Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France.
The researchers believe that this change was because a Bronze Age people called the Sintashta had domesticated their local horse and begun to use these animals to help them dramatically expand their territory.
Domesticating wild horses on the plains of Eurasia was a process, not a single event, scientists say.
Archaeologists have previously found evidence of people consuming horse milk in dental remains dating to around 5,500 years ago, and the earliest evidence of horse ridership dates to around 5,000 years ago. But it was the Sintashta who spread the particular horses they had domesticated across Eurasia, the new study suggests…
People had domesticated other animals several thousand years before horses—including dogs, pigs, cattle, goats and sheep. But the new research shows that the shrinking genetic diversity associated with domestication happened much faster in horses.
“Humans changed the horse genome stunningly quickly, perhaps because we already had experience dealing with animals,” said Laurent Frantz, who studies the genetics of ancient creatures at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and was not involved in the study.
“It shows the special place of horses in human societies.”…
“Scientists have traced the origin of the modern horse to a lineage that emerged 4,200 years ago,” from @larsonchristina in @physorg_com.
* Shakespeare, Richard III
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As we mount up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1878 that Eadweard Muybridge took a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs. He had been retained by former California Governor (and university founder) Leland Stanford to help settle a bet. While Muybridge was best known in his own day for his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, he did seminal early work on motion picture projection, and the approaches he developed for the study of motion are at the heart of both animation and computer analysis today.
“I wonder if computers ever dream of humans”*…
How old are the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence? Many might trace their origins to the mid-twentieth century, and the work of people such as Alan Turing, who wrote about the possibility of machine intelligence in the ‘40s and ‘50s, or the MIT engineer Norbert Wiener, a founder of cybernetics. But these fields have prehistories — traditions of machines that imitate living and intelligent processes — stretching back centuries and, depending how you count, even millennia…
Defecating ducks [see here], talking busts, and mechanized Christs — Jessica Riskin on the wonderful history of automata, machines built to mimic the processes of intelligent life: “Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence.”
* David Mitchell, Ghostwritten
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As we take the Turing Test, we might spare a thought for Eadweard Muybridge; he died on this date in 1904. Best remembered now for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion (created for former California Governor Leland Stanford to help settle a bet), and early work in motion-picture projection, he was famous in his own day for his large photographs of Yosemite Valley. The approaches he developed for the study of motion are at the heart of both animation and computer analysis today.
“Various species grouped together according/ To their past beliefs”*…
A page from Constantine Rafinesque’s field notebook
Pranks are meant to be discovered—what’s the point in fooling someone if they never notice they’ve been fooled? But one 19th century prank, sprung by John James Audubon on another naturalist, was so extensive and so well executed that its full scope is only now coming to light.
The prank began when the French naturalist Constantine Rafinesque sought out Audubon on a journey down the Ohio River in 1818. Audubon was years away from publishing Birds in America, but even then he was known among colleagues for his ornithological drawings. Rafinesque was on the hunt for new species—plants in particular—and he imagined that Audubon might have unwittingly included some unnamed specimens in his sketches.
Rafinesque was an extremely enthusiastic namer of species: during his career as a naturalist, he named 2,700 plant genera and 6,700 species, approximately. He was self-taught, and the letter of introduction he handed to Audubon described him as “an odd fish.” When they met, Audubon noted, Rafinesque was wearing a “long loose coat…stained all over with the juice of plants,” a waistcoat “with enormous pockets” and a very long beard. Rafinesque was not known for his social graces; as John Jeremiah Sullivan writes, Audubon is the “only person on record” as actually liking him.
During their visit, though, Audubon fed Rafinesque descriptions of American creatures, including 11 species of fish that never really existed. Rafinesque duly jotted them down in his notebook and later proffered those descriptions as evidence of new species. For 50 or so years, those 11 fish remained in the scientific record as real species, despite their very unusual features, including bulletproof (!) scales.
By the 1870s, the truth about the fish had been discovered. But the fish were only part of Audubon’s prank…
More at “Audubon Made Up At Least 28 Fake Species To Prank A Rival.”
* Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), “Bills Corpse,” Trout Mask Replica
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As we tease each other with taxonomy, we might recall that it was on this date in 2009 that a man riding his horse across the Golden Gate Bridge from Marin to San Francisco was stopped by the California Highway Patrol. The CHP, which judged the horse a danger to pedestrians and bicyclists who use the walkway and a distraction to drivers– who did indeed slow to a crawl– had the rider dismount and walk his mount back to the Marin side.
The offending equestrian returning to the Marin Headlands
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