Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association7 between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 bc8,9 driving the spread of Indo-European languages10. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture11,12.

DNA hybridization‐capture techniques allow researchers to focus their sequencing efforts on preselected genomic regions. This feature is especially useful when analysing ancient DNA (aDNA) extracts, which are often dominated by exogenous environmental sources. Here, we assessed, for the first time, the performance of hyRAD as an inexpensive and design‐free alternative to commercial capture protocols to obtain authentic aDNA data from osseous remains. HyRAD relies on double enzymatic restriction of fresh DNA extracts to produce RNA probes that cover only a fraction of the genome and can serve as baits for capturing homologous fragments from aDNA libraries. We found that this approach could retrieve sequence data from horse remains coming from a range of preservation environments, including beyond radiocarbon range, yielding up to 146.5‐fold on‐target enrichment for aDNA extracts showing extremely low endogenous content (<1%). Performance was, however, more limited for those samples already characterized by good DNA preservation (>20%–30%), while the fraction of endogenous reads mapping on‐ and off‐target was relatively insensitive to the original endogenous DNA content. Procedures based on two instead of a single round of capture increased on‐target coverage up to 3.6‐fold. Additionally, we used methylation‐sensitive restriction enzymes to produce probes targeting hypomethylated regions, which improved data quality by reducing post‐mortem DNA damage and mapping within multicopy regions. Finally, we developed a fully automated hyRAD protocol utilizing inexpensive robotic platforms to facilitate capture processing. Overall, our work establishes hyRAD as a cost‐effective strategy to recover a set of shared orthologous variants across multiple ancient samples.

No abstract

The Kostenki-Borshchevo site complex (Voronezh region, Russia) serves as the foundation of Eastern Europe’s Upper Paleolithic chronocultural framework. Here we present new radiocarbon dates for three Kostenki sites. Dates of ∼27.5–27 ka BP for Kostenki 15 suggest that its archaeological layer accumulated over a short period. These results help to confirm that the site is unrelated to Aurignacian assemblages. New dates for the Kostenki-Avdeevo Culture (KAC) Layer I of Kostenki 1 address the longstanding question of its chronology. Our results of ∼23.5–23 ka BP from different areas of the site are consistent with the layer’s accumulation over a short period. These results accord with recently obtained dates for Kostenki’s other KAC sites. Our younger results of ∼22.5–21 ka BP for different material from Layer III of Kostenki 21 are similarly consistent with a short chronological window for Kostenki’s KAC sites. Overall, this and other recent publications support the view that many Kostenki assemblages are chronologically distinct. This provides an important insight into the tempo of Upper Paleolithic cultural change.

В № 17 «Записок ИИМК РАН» публикуются научные исследования в области изучения древнекаменного века Восточной Европы, представленные на Международной научной конференции «Плейстоцен и палеолит Русской равнины: развитие идей комплексного подхода», посвященной 80-летию со дня рождения выдающегося исследователя палеолита Н. Д. Праслова.Издание адресовано археологам, культурологам, историкам, музееведам, студентам исторических факультетов вузов.The 17 th issue of the «Transactions of IHMC RAS» features papers focused on the Old Stone Age of East Europe, which were presented at the International scholarly conference «The Pleistocene and Paleolithic of the Russian Plain: the development of complex approach» dedicated to the 80 th birth anniversary of N. D. Praslov.The volume is intended for archaeologists, culturologists, historians, museum workers, and students of historical faculties.