Lesson Plan: Ancient Horse DNA Reveals How the Fierce Scythian Warriors Survived
II. While Reading Activities
Word Inference
- Nomad |ˈnōˌmad| noun-a member of a people having no permanent abode, and who travel from place to place to find fresh pasture for their livestock.
- deploy |dəˈploi|-verb-bring into effective action; utilize: they are not always able to deploy this skill.
- DNA |ˌdē ˌen ˈā| noun-Biochemistry-deoxyribonucleic acid, a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information.
- stallion |ˈstalyən| noun-an uncastrated adult male horse.
- genetic |jəˈnedik| adjective- of or relating to genes or heredity: all the cells in the body contain the same genetic information.
- inbreed |ˈinbrēd| verb (past and past participle inbred) (often as breed from closely related people or animals, especially over many generations: persistent inbreeding has produced an unusually high frequency of sufferers from this disease.
- mare |mer| noun-the female of a horse or other equine animal.
- chariot |ˈCHerēət| noun-a two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle used in ancient warfare and racing.
- theory |ˈTHirē| noun (pl. theories) a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained: Darwin’s theory of evolution.
- breeder |ˈbrēdər| noun-a person who breeds livestock, racehorses, other animals, or plants: a plant breeder | a breeder of fine cattle.
Reading Comprehension: Fill-ins
Among the farm animals whose lives have become entwined with people, horses were a late addition. Dogs were the first animal friends of humans — wolves that scavenged for food among garbage piles and turned docile about 15,000 years ago, or possibly much earlier. Cattle, chickens and pigs were domesticated by people in different parts of the world between 8,000 and 11,000 years ago. It was only about 5,500 years ago that people in Central Asia started catching and keeping wild horses for meat and milk. Riding horses came later.
Grammar Focus
Grammar: Identifying Articles
The genetic changes may slightly reduce the number of neural crest cells. This begins to support a sort of grand theory. In modern horses, the Y chromosomes in stallions are almost identical. The Y chromosome tells the genetic story of males of a species.
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