Editing Onager (section)

==Relationship with humans==
[[File:Model of a chariot drawn by four horses abreast. Quadriga consists of a chariot and a charioteer with four onagers. From Tell Agrab, Iraq. Early Dynastic period, 2600-2370 BCE. Iraq Museum.jpg|thumb|Quadriga consists of a chariot and a charioteer with four onagers. From Tell Agrab, Iraq. Early Dynastic period, 2600–2370 BCE. Iraq Museum. This is the oldest known model of a quadriga drawn by onagers.]]
Onagers are notoriously  difficult to tame. Equids were used in ancient [[Sumer]] to pull wagons {{c.|2600 BC}}, and then [[chariot]]s on the [[Standard of Ur]], {{c.|2550 BC|lk=off}}. Clutton-Brock (1992) suggests that these were [[donkey]]s rather than onagers on the basis of a "shoulder stripe".<ref name="Clutton-Brock 1992">{{cite book |first=Juliet |last=Clutton-Brock |year=1992 |title=Horse Power: A History of the Horse and the Donkey in Human Societies |publisher=Harvard University Press | location=Boston, Massachusetts, US | isbn=978-0-674-40646-9}}</ref> However, close examination of the animals (equids, [[sheep]] and [[cattle]]) on both sides of the piece indicate that what appears to be a stripe may well be a harness, a trapping, or a joint in the inlay.<ref name="Heimpel 1968">{{cite book | first=Wolfgang | last=Heimpel | year=1968 | title=Tierbilder in der Sumerische Literatur| publisher = Studia Pohl 2 | location = Italy }}</ref><ref name="Maekawa 1979">{{cite journal |last=Maekawa |first=K. |year=1979 |title=The Ass and the Onager in Sumer in the Late Third Millennium B.C. |journal=Acta Sumerologica |location=Hiroshima |volume=I |pages=35–62}}</ref> Genetic testing of skeletons from that era shows that they were [[kunga (equid)|kungas]], a cross between an onager and a donkey.