These Ancient 'War Donkeys' Were Likely The 1st Human-Bred Hybrid Animals

A new study shows that Mesopotamians used hybrid donkeys and wild asses to pull their war wagons 500 years before horses were bred for the purpose.

The analysis of ancient DNA from animal bones unearthed in northern Syria resolves a long-standing question of just what type of animals were the "kungas" described in ancient sources as pulling war wagons.

Eva-Maria Geigl, a genomicist, said that the skeletons were equids, but they did not fit the measurements of the donkeys and wild asses. It was not clear what the difference was.

The study shows that kungas were a strong, fast and sterile hybrid of a female domestic donkey and a male Syrian wild ass.

The cult of a Mesopotamian moon god was discovered in a fort.

The process of breeding kungas could be explained by the fact that they are highly prized and expensive beasts.

She said that the kunga had to be bred with a female donkey and a male wild ass, which had to be captured, because they were sterile.

She said that it was difficult because wild asses were impossible to tame and could run faster than donkeys and kungas.
Geigl told Live Science that the hybrid was bio- engineered. The earliest hybrid was the one that they had to do each time they produced a kunga, so it explains why they were so valuable.

War animals.

erry Grange is from the CNRS-Université de Paris.

The British Museum in London has a "war panel" of the "Standard of Ur". The war wagons are pulled by teams of kunga.

The British Museum in London has a display on the "Standard of Ur," a mosaic from about 4,500 years ago that depicts four-wheeled war wagons.

Archaeologists thought they were a hybrid donkey, but they didn't know it was a hybrid.

She said that some experts thought Syrian wild asses were too small to be bred to produce kungas.

There are facts about America's wild horses.

The last Syrian wild ass died in 1927 at the Tiergarten Schnbrunn in Vienna, and its remains are now preserved in that city.

The researchers compared the genomes from the bones of the last Syrian wild ass from Vienna and the 11,000-year-old bones of a wild ass unearthed at the archaeological site of Gbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey.

The ancient wild ass was much larger than the same animal.

She said that the Syrian wild ass species had become smaller in recent times due to environmental pressures.

Ancient Mesopotamia.

The first domesticated horses were 500 years before they were introduced from the north of the Caucasus Mountains, according to a 2020 study in the journal Science Advances.
The Assyrian capital of Nineveh has a stone panel in the British Museum that shows two men leading a wild ass.

The site of the ancient city of Tuba is thought to have been the ruins of the princely burial complex at Tell Umm el-Marra in Northern Syria.

Glenn Schwartz is a professor at the John Hopkins University.

The bones were excavated by the study co-author about 10 years ago. The animals from Tell Umm el-Marra were kungas because of the marks on their teeth and the fact that they had been fed rather than left to eat.
She said that the practice of using kungas to pull war wagons probably continued after the introduction of domesticated horses into Mesopotamia.

The last kungas died and no more were bred from donkeys or wild asses because domesticated horses were easier to breed.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

There are related content.

15 amazing animal recruits are in war.

The bear hybrid is spreading across the north.

The ancient tell of Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II.

The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.