The horse, one of the last large herbivores to be domesticated ~5,500 years ago, had a deep impact on human history. Over the last decade, the supervisor and the host institute have developed leading research to reconstruct the history of horse domestication. Their methodology embraces the latest techniques at the forefront of molecular genetics and leverages the complete genetic information present in ancient horse remains to catch evolution red-handed, map population affinities in the past, and identify selection signatures around genes of interest for past breeders. Their work are transforming our understanding of horse domestication, and is accompanied by multiple scientific publications in high-profile journals (eg, Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology).
The project ZEPHYRUS focuses on Iberia (Figure 1), one of the few remaining places on Earth concentrating many knowledge gaps on horse evolution and domestication. While previous genomic work at the host institute was limited to only N=15 Iberian samples, it revealed the presence of a now extinct and extremely divergent lineage by the mid-Holocene (this lineage was nicknamed ‘IBE’). The evolutionary origin of this lineage, its legacy into the modern world, and the conditions accompanying its demise remained unknown. The ZEPHYRUS project investigates the evolutive history of the Iberian horses from the IBE lineage as well as the interactions with other cultures who brought domestic horses into Iberia (from a DOM2 genetic background, native from the southwestern Russian steppes), reshaping the genomic composition of the Iberian populations through the time.
Combining data from Humanities and Biosciences (archaeological and archaeozoological data with biological and genomic information from ancient specimens) this project addresses the following objectives: 1) To track the ghost Iberian lineage (IBE) and genetically characterize the diversity of Upper Palaeolithic Iberian horses; 2) To assess the genetic contribution of native Iberian horses to domestication and refine IBE extinction data; 3) To identify and quantify the contribution of Iberian horses to the genetic makeup of Roman horses; 4) To quantify the impact of the Muslim expansion on the genetic makeup of Iberian horses; 5) To test genetically the survival of the zebro until medieval times and its taxonomical association.
