Background: Despite decades of research, the horse domestication scenario in East Asia remains poorly understood.
Results: The study identified 16 haplogroups with fine-scale phylogenetic resolution using mitochondrial genomes of 317 horse samples. The time to the most recent common ancestor of the 16 haplogroups ranges from [0.8-3.1] thousand years ago (KYA) to [7.9-27.1] KYA. With combined analyses of the mitochondrial control region for 35 extant Przewalski's horses, 3544 modern and 203 ancient horses across the world, researchers provide evidence for that East Asian prevalent haplogroups Q and R were indigenously domesticated or they were involved in numerous distinct genetic components from wild horses in the southern part of East Asia. These events of haplotypes Q and R occurred during 4.7 to 16.3 KYA and 2.1 to 11.5 KYA, respectively. The diffusion of preponderant European haplogroups L from west to East Asia is consistent with the external gene input. Furthermore, genetic differences were detected between northern East Asia and southern East Asia cohorts by Principal Component Analysis, Analysis of Molecular Variance test, the χ2 test and phylogeographic analyses.
Conclusions: All results suggest a complex picture of horse domestication, as well as geographic pattern in East Asia. Both local origin and external input occurred in East Asia horse populations. And besides, there are at least two different domestication or hybridization centers in East Asia.
Keywords: Domestic horse; East Asia; External input; Local origin.