WILD horses were tamed in many different places in Eurasia 6000 years ago,
mitochondrial DNA evidence shows. It had been thought that horses were
domesticated in a few isolated areas through selective breeding, and then
distributed to other regions. But Carles Vilà of Uppsala University in
Sweden and his colleagues suggest it was the skills needed to capture, tame and
rear horses, rather than horses themselves, that spread from tribe to tribe.
Their analysis of mtDNA from 191 domestic horses threw up 32 different
maternal lines (Science, vol 291, p 474). “That means a huge number of
female lineages…
