Modern Horses were domesticated in Europe

I've been waiting for some concrete DNA evidence about where modern horses came from since I interviewed Alan Outram three years ago and he hinted that it was soon to be published. He indicated that Sintashta horses might end up being more important than Yamnaya ones, and now that the new paper, to which he contributed, has finally been published, I can see why.

 

The new paper (Librado et al 2021) doesn't make the findings very clear IMO (refers to Europe as West Eurasia and makes the contested assumption that Corded Ware was descended from Yamnaya) but it does answer some important questions. I will summarise the findings in a clear TLDR bullet point list below:

• Botai may have been first to corral horses for milking but they didn't ride them.

• Yamnaya kept horses for milking too but we cannot see if they were ridden (However Trautmann et al 2023 shows Yamnaya did ride them)

• Wilkin et al (2021) looking at milk proteins in pottery agrees with this new paper regarding "a potential epicentre for horse domestication in the Pontic–Caspian steppe by the third millennium BC" = Yamnaya.

• Librado et al (2021) points to Volga-Don region (aka Yamnaya EUROPE) as the homeland of modern domestic horses

• Sintashta horses (DOM2) were superior for riding (stronger backs) and replaced earlier ones from 2200 BC

• Sintashta horses (DOM2) had genetic continuity with earlier Yamnaya /Repin ones (TURG) and Steppe Maykop (Aygurskii), and Poltavka (Sosnovka) - specifically two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC

• Yamnaya horses had some relation, but not much, to Botai horses

• The Tarpan and modern Przewalski’s horses do not descend from the same ancestral population as modern domestic horses

• Modern horses were domesticated in Europe but the paper calls it West Eurasia - possibly as a deliberate, politically motivated obfuscation

• The ancestors of Sintashta horses came from the steppe East of the Dnieper and West of the Volga-Don region - ie: firmly within European Yamnaya territory during the late fourth and early third millennia BC

• Corded Ware horses were not the same as Yamnaya/Sintashta horses 

• Earlier LBK and other Neolithic horses in Denmark, Poland, Czechia and Hungary had some affinity with Yamnaya/Sintashta horses - the geneflow seems to have been via Thrace

• Corded Ware expansion into Europe was not accompanied by horses but rather they adopted local horses as they migrated (not clear if they were ridden)

• Replacement of other horse lineages in Europe and Asia by Sintashta ones was accompanied by spread of both equestrianism and (a bit later) light two wheeled war chariots

• The spread of Sintashta horses into the middle east was likely accompanied by the spread of a specialised class of Sintashta descended horse trainers like the Mitanni.

Sintashta were a people of European origin and their horses came from Yamnaya horses and Yamnaya domesticated their horses in Europe (see Robert Molyneaux's forensic reconstruction of a Yamnaya male above). Reminder that Sintashta, despite being Proto-Indo-Iranic speakers, the descendant languages of which are now found in Iran and India, were white people. So it is accurate to say that white people gave modern domestic horses to the world. Below are some reconstructions of Sintashta men by "ancestral whispers".

All this new information should be considered when we examine the evident Indo-European origin of horse sacrifice which I discussed at length in a documentary film on the subject.

EDIT: A new paper from March 2023 presents biological evidence that Yamnaya rode horses and they were the first to do so. So Europeans really were the first horse riders ever. 

JIVE TALK: NEW DNA from Tarim mummies

New Genetic Study on Tarim Mummies of China

New genetic data on Tarim mummies disproves my claim that early Tarim mummies were Iranic. It also shows the likely origin of Tocharian languages is in the Dzungarian Basin just north of Tarim rather than Tarim itself. Tarim mummies date from 2000 BC to AD 200 yet this sample only looks at the very oldest of those. Even older samples (3000–2800 BC) in the new study are from the Dzungarian Basin and these samples appear to be Afanasievo derived and therefore are likely the source of Tocharian languages, and if so then the language moved South into Tarim from them, but the early mummies from Tarim itself, at least the 13 in this study which date from 2100–1700 BC, do NOT appear to be Tocharians or even, as I speculated in my video las year, Iranic speaking Aryans, rather an isolated refugia of ice-age like people predominantly descended from Ancient North Eurasians and West Siberian Hunter-Gatherers (WSHG themselves were 72.5% ANE, 7.5% West European Hunter-Gatherer, and 20% Ancient East Asian).

We can't say what language these Siberian mammoth hunters turned lizard-eaters of Tarim spoke (not an Indo-European one though), although we know the genes associated with Tocharian and Iranic speakers both entered the Tarim basin region later on. Interesting that the mummies appear to be European in phenotype despite not descending from Indo-European bronze age steppe peoples who are autosomally like modern Europeans. As the paper says:

“The Tarim mummies’ so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool,”

So they look physically European because they have ANE DNA. This also answers the question of why some Ainu people from Japan, and some ancient native American skeletons like Kennewick man, look like Europeans; They all have ANE DNA and ANE were obviously Europoid.

This also explains why the material culture of early Tarim people resembles that of Siberian peoples. Take the idols for example:

You find faces similar to this everywhere you find WSHG/ANE ancestry in Siberia and Central Asia. The Mansi, Kalash and Ket all make figurines in similar trends to this day.

It is important to remember that these new samples from Tarim represent only the first 400 years of that burial tradition which lasted a further 1900 years! Without samples from those following long 19 centuries we cannot say for sure when the WSHG people disappeared but I highly suspect that later Tarim mummies like Cherchen man (see below), who died c. 1000 BC, in all probability do have steppe admixture and could well be Iranic or Tocharian speakers.

Chercen man depicted by Andrew Whyte

Tocharian and Iranic speakers of steppe descent entered the Tarim basin from different routes at different times, but the original inhabitants were these ANE descended Siberian people and they mixed with the incoming Indo-Europeans. So I still think that Cherchen man and the Yanghai cannabis shaman were both Indo-European people.

So what do we know about the people of this Siberian ANE-rich refugia?

• Their race underwent a bottleneck and formed over 9000 years ago

• They were homogenous population scattered in the Tarim desert, rarely mixing with neighbours

• They adopted pastoralist lifestyle from neighbouring steppe peoples

• They consumed dairy products like kefir but were lactose intolerant

• They farmed animals - likely due to Afanasievo influence

• They were not European but they looked European due to ANE ancestry

• They had genes associated with dark skin in SLC24A5 and SLC45A5 like East asians do

• We don’t know what language they originally spoke

• They likely adopted Tocharian and Iranic languages after mixing with their Afanasievo neighbours of the Dzungarian basin to the North who were related to Yamnaya, and Andronovo neighbours to the West who were Aryans. This occurred sometime after 1700 BC

• They buried their dead with ephedra twigs like later BMAC and Iranic cultures did

• They made idols similar to those made by other Siberian peoples

The ancient Indo-European Cannabis Cult

Who were the first cannabis users in history? Cannabis sativa has been cultivated by humans for thousands of years both as a narcotic and also for making hemp fabrics. Brand new genetic and archaeological evidence places the original domestication event in China, but indicates that the plant was mainly spread by Indo-European peoples such as the Yamnaya and the Scythians. Cannabis was used in the funerary and religious rites in many pagan religions as well as in ancient Jewish rites in Israel.

Art

Waking of sky tree - Stonehenge shaman

A Forest of Shadows Art & Illustration  - Arda Viraf's dream

Sources

I was aided in research for this video by Chris Bennett of cannabisculture.com to whom I am very grateful

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Yamnaya: Indo-European documentary

The Yamnaya culture, also called the Kurgan or Late Ochre Grave culture, of the late Neolithic and Bronze age Pontic steppe is believed to be one of several Proto-Indo-European speaking Western Steppe herder peoples who were ancestral to many modern peoples and who spread Indo-European languages across Eurasia. But what did Yamnaya look like? In this documentary film you can see 3D forensic facial reconstructions of Yamnaya men by the artist Robert Molyneaux and you can learn all about what Yamnaya people ate, why they loved milk, how they lived, their burial customs, how they spread and more.

Art

pic.twitter.com/iiLMDgu2in

— 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐍 (@GramanhFolcwald) May 31, 2021

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Music

Xurious - Steppe expansion

Altyn Tuu - Altai throat singing

Gargoyle - dance with me

The Whole Other - Ether Oar

Patrick Patrik - Away

Doug maxwell - tribal war council

Bark sound productions - in return 

kevin macleod - Master of the feast

Aethelruna - Output

Chris Zabriskie - The Theatrical Poster for Poltergeist III

Borg - The Dancing Forest

Khan Kurra - Little dragon

Chris Zabriskie - I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary

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