The kunga was a hybrid equid that was used as a draft animal in ancient Syria and Mesopotamia, where it also served as an economic and political status symbol. Cuneiform writings from as early as the mid-third millennium BCE describe the animal as a hybrid but do not provide the precise taxonomical nature of the breeding that produced it.

2022年1月14日 · Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans. The mysterious equines were bred in Syria 4,500 years ago, likely for use in warfare

2022年1月20日 · Having been depicted in mosaics and their value recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets, researchers suspected the prestigious kunga was a type of hybrid donkey.

2023年7月17日 · Among archeologists, the kunga is known as one of humanity’s first beasts of burden. Now, DNA research suggests that this striking equid may have also been the earliest human-made...

2022年1月14日 · Bronze Age bioengineers created the earliest hybrid animal – a majestic horse-like creature known as a kunga that had a donkey mom, a Syrian wild ass for a father and lived 4,500 years ago.

2022年1月14日 · Part of this “second act” of the urban revolution was the breeding and employment of an equid of high status and prestige designated a “kunga.” The precise taxonomical determination of the kunga and its identification in the archaeological record have been uncertain until now.

2022年2月2日 · Mysterious kunga is the oldest known human-bred hybrid animal Part donkey, part wild ass, these high-value animals were bred in Syria 4,500 years ago DNA reveals that these ancient and mysterious skeletons were donkey-wild ass hybrids.

As early as the 3rd millennium BC, Mesopotamians crossbred the domestic donkey with the now-extinct Syrian wild ass to produce a hybrid known as a Kunga. Horse-donkey hybrids (the mule and hinny ) are also of ancient vintage, as evidenced by their presence in works such as the Iliad and the Hebrew Bible .

2022年1月14日 · The kunga is the first known instance of a human-engineered hybrid of two species, a production far beyond the traditional processes of the domestication of animals, the researchers...

2022年1月16日 · The Kunga, the researchers found, is the first identified case of two species' human-engineered hybrid, a production very far from the traditional process of animal domestication.