u/Hippophlebotomist

Horse genetics, archaeology, and the beginning of riding (Anthony, Trautmann, & Heyd 2026)

Horse genetics, archaeology, and the beginning of riding

Abstract:

"Recent papers argued that the domestication of horses can be equated with the appearance of favorable genetic mutations that are first evident in individuals in the DOM2 clade dated about ∼2200–2100 BCE. We challenge the idea that this genetic shift alone defines domestication. Evidence from archaeology, ancient DNA, osteology, and other disciplines shows that horses from multiple genetic backgrounds (DOM1, DOM2, and, as we suggest here, DOM3) were managed, milked, and ridden long before 2200 BCE. Yamnaya groups (∼3200–2600 BCE) rode DOM2 horses—the direct ancestors of modern domestic stock—while incorporating them into diets, rituals, and mobility systems. Selection for traits linked to endurance and temperament began centuries earlier. Rather than a sudden breakthrough, domestication was a protracted, regionally varied process whose transformative effects on human mobility and social organization began as early as the fourth, if not the fifth millennium BCE, and set the stage for later DOM2 dominance."

Press coverage here: The first domesticated horses: 6,000 years of a complex story

u/Hippophlebotomist — 9 days ago

Language and Script in Achaemenid and Hellenistic Central Asia (Mairs 2026)

Free to download until May 20!

"This Element examines – for the first time in a single volume – the written evidence from the 'Far East' of the Hellenistic world (Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia, Gandhara). It examines how successive invaders of this region, from Persia, Greece and India, left their linguistic and textual mark. It reviews the surviving Hellenistic-period written material from archaeological sites in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan in Aramaic, Greek and Prakrit.:

cambridge.org
u/Hippophlebotomist — 15 days ago

Abstract: This article presents additional readings of several inscriptions written in the Issyk-Kushan script, building on the improved system of sound values recently proposed by Sims-Williams (2025b). We propose that some further lines of Dašt-i Nāwur inscription DN III and parts of several other inscriptions can now be read as Bactrian, add new first-hand data from the Almosi inscription site and suggest decipherments for a few previously undeciphered characters of the script.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com
u/Hippophlebotomist — 25 days ago
▲ 28 r/IndoEuropean+1 crossposts

"This dissertation serves as the first full comprehensive grammar of the Phrygian language, which was spoken in central Anatolia from the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE to the middle of the 1st millennium CE and is attested in a total of about 500 inscriptions. The language as attested is divided into two stages; Old Phrygian, which was written in a native alphabet, spans from the earliest Phrygian inscriptions to about 300 BCE, whereas New Phrygian, which was written in the Greek alphabet, encompasses about 120 inscriptions from the beginning of the first millennium CE. Previous scholarship has for the most part focused on interpreting Phrygian inscriptions, the lexicon of the language, or tackled individual issues of grammar; this work aims to produce a full synchronic and diachronic grammar of the language, focusing prominently on the dialectal position of Phrygian within the Indo-European group of languages."

scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl
u/Hippophlebotomist — 1 month ago