Horse domestication revolutionized warfare and accelerated travel, trade, and the geographic expansion of languages. Here, we present the largest DNA time series for a non-human organism to date, including genome-scale data from 149 ancient animals and 129 ancient genomes (≥1-fold coverage), 87 of which are new. This extensive dataset allows us to assess the modern legacy of past equestrian civilizations. We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity. We show that the influence of Persian-related horse lineages increased following the Islamic conquests in Europe and Asia. Multiple alleles associated with elite-racing, including at the MSTN "speed gene," only rose in popularity within the last millennium. Finally, the development of modern breeding impacted genetic diversity more dramatically than the previous millennia of human management.

Although a Near Eastern presence had been documented for the “Far West”—namely Portuguese territory—since the nineteenth century, study of the arrival of Eastern Mediterranean populations on the European Atlantic coast expanded considerably in the last twenty years of the twentieth century. In effect, the discovery and excavation of archaeological sites of mostly Mediterranean material culture has almost tripled since the 1980s. Today, the amount of archaeological data concerning the presence of Phoenicians in Portuguese territory is extensive and varying in nature, and we possess finds and architecture that can be analyzed in the context of an Orientalizing Iron Age. This chapter investigates the Phoenician colonization on the Atlantic Coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It analyzes ceramics and their stratigraphic sequences, domestic and funerary architecture, radiocarbon dates, and even the geography of the sites to understand the motives behind Phoenician voyages to Portugal, their chronology, and not only how settlement took place but how means of contact were established between the indigenous peoples and foreign groups of colonists.