In the largest-ever ancient DNA study of its kind, researchers have pieced together the history of the horse: It’s an epic saga sprawling across continents and 5,000 years of evolution and domestication, and yes, it has plot twists.

Among the finds: researchers uncovered two lost lineages of the animal on opposite ends of Eurasia and determined that the modern horse is very different than even its recent ancestors, thanks in part to geopolitics.

The scope of the study included 278 sa