Archaeological discoveries

The first most beautiful conquest of the human being was... a donkey

Nearly 5000 years ago, in Mesopotamia, humans were at war with donkeys. But the identity of the most illustrious of them remained unknown...until the work of French researchers.

Tomb of horses from Umm-El-Marra (Syria).

Several centuries before the advent of the horse in the Fertile Crescent, humans were already making war there with the help of various equids and in particular donkeys. This was known from drawings and descriptions in bas-reliefs and cuneiform clay tablets, including the famous 4500 year old "Standard of Ur". However, a doubt remained:where did the most illustrious and renowned of these equines come from, the kunga, which then sold for exorbitant prices in Mesopotamia? This mystery has just been solved by the team of Eva-Maria Geigl and Thierry Grange from the Jacques-Monod Institute (Paris, CNRS) in the Science Advances from January 14, 2022.

Researchers have succeeded in making DNA speak

Present in some cuneiform tablets , explains the researcher, the kunga was described as an animal of very high value. Its price could reach six times that of a donkey .“ But who were his parents? "Now extinct, the origins of kunga remained highly controversial, she continues. The dominant hypothesis was that these equines were hybrid animals but without more certainty, and especially without knowing the identity of the two parents of the kunga .“ The researchers had to make the bones of the princely funerary complex of Umm el-Marra, in the north of present-day Syria, speak, supposed to be the remains of kungas. “This site is exceptional , explains Eva-Maria Geigl. The equines were buried in separate graves and their skeletons are almost complete" .

Detail of the panel of the Standard of Ur preserved at the British Museum. Credit Thierry Grange.

Kungas could never be domesticated

However, because of the hot climatic conditions of the region, the bones of these equines, all males, are very degraded and have only retained portions of DNA. However, the researchers managed to compare the genomes of these animals with the DNA of other equines likely to occupy the region at the same time, horses, domestic but also wild donkeys. Like the hemiones, the Asiatic wild asses. “They could never be domesticated, says Eva-Maria Geigl. Not even tamed. They are very aggressive. The last living specimens were in the Vienna Zoo (Austria). The last one died in 1929. We also collected their genetic material.

And the DNA spoke:it is precisely from the union of a hemione male and a domestic donkey that the kungas buried at Umm el-Marra come. Or hybrids. Sterile. Requiring therefore for each offspring to recapture one of these wild donkeys. “It was very difficult, they were so fast and wild! adds the researcher.

We then understand better why these equines sold for so much... We also understand that as soon as they were able to replace them with less expensive and "complicated" mounts to breed, humans did not deprive themselves. Thus, when half a millennium later, the first domestic horses were imported from the Pontic steppe, north of the Black Sea, more docile, easier to breed, the death knell will have sounded for the kunga...