The people of Mesopotamia have reunited two species that had long diverged on the family tree to create their own Chimera monster, leaving modern scientists baffled.
According to Dr. Eva-Maria Geigl, a geneticist from the Jacques Monod Institute in Paris, France, one of the members of the international research team, the Kunga skeletons unearthed in Syria were identified as the creatures that ancient Mesopotamians used to pull their war chariots.
Kunga of Mesopotamia, a real-life Chimera – (Photo: Johns Hopkins University)
However, the analysis of the bones was completely perplexing. “It is an animal that resembles a horse but is not, and it does not match the measurements of a donkey or a native wild species known as the Syrian wild ass,” Dr. Geigl stated.
Ultimately, they had to analyze DNA from these 4,500-year-old skeletons, resulting in a shocking conclusion: it was a hybrid creature between two species that no longer exist in the world, a type of “Chimera.” The Chimera is a mythical creature from Greek mythology, featuring body parts from different species because it is “a hybrid.”
Specifically, the ancient Mesopotamians used female domestic donkeys crossed with male Syrian wild asses, also known as hemiones. Although called donkeys, they are a distinct species from domestic donkeys and diverged on the family tree long ago.
According to Live Science, ancient records regarded this hybrid creature, known as “Kunga,” as a premium and very expensive animal. Similar to other hybrids like mules, the mating of male Syrian wild asses with female domestic donkeys had to be forced. However, unlike mules, Kunga had a beautiful and tall physique, making it suitable to replace warhorses in chariots.
This breeding process is believed to be very challenging because the Syrian wild ass is a robust species, running very fast and cannot be domesticated. Moreover, Kunga is also infertile like mules, so each offspring required another arduous forced mating. This might explain why Kunga was so expensive, according to Science Alert.
The research remains controversial, as the Syrian wild ass has a smaller physique while Kunga is almost as large as a horse. Kunga appears to have gone extinct alongside Mesopotamian civilization, while the Syrian wild ass is also extinct. The last individual died in 1927 at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria.
In the new study, scientists had to compare the genome with the bones of an 11,000-year-old Syrian wild ass previously unearthed. However, this 11,000-year-old skeleton indicates that the Syrian wild ass was much larger than the individuals that died in the zoo, and it is highly likely that it remained large until the time of Mesopotamian civilization, making it a reasonable “father” of Kunga.
The study was recently published in the scientific journal Science Advances.
