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Found a couple of interesting articles about domestication of cattle - where, when, how.
There have been many theories about where and when cattle first were domesticated, and if it were several independent domestication events or one domestication that spread from a certain geographic area. Maybe DNA can help in getting a clearer picture of these events.
DNA is more and more used in the study of animal domestication and other zooarchaeological topics.
quote: Author Summary The DNA of domesticated plants and animals contains information about how species were domesticated, exported, and bred by early farmers. Modern breeds were developed by lengthy and complex processes; however, our use of 134 breeds and new analytical models enabled us to reveal some of the processes that created modern cattle diversity. In Asia, Africa, North and South America, humpless (Bos t. taurus or taurine) and humped (Bos t. indicus or indicine) cattle were crossbred to produce hybrids adapted to the environment and local production systems. The history of Asian cattle involves the domestication and admixture of several species whereas African taurines arose through the introduction of domesticated Fertile Crescent taurines and their hybridization with wild African aurochs. African taurine genetic background is commonly observed among European Mediterranean breeds. The absence of indicine introgression within most European taurine breeds, but presence within three Italian breeds is consistent with at least two separate migration waves of cattle to Europe, one from the Middle East which captured taurines in which indicine introgression had already occurred and the second from western Africa into Spain with no indicine introgression. This second group seems to have radiated from Spain into the Mediterranean resulting in a cline of African taurine introgression into European taurines.
Worldwide Patterns of Ancestry, Divergence, and Admixture in Domesticated Cattle Domestication of cattle
Here is a popular summary:
quote:The genetic history of 134 cattle breeds from around the world has been completed by a group of researchers. In the process of completing this history, they found that ancient domesticated African cattle originated in the 'Fertile Crescent,' a region that covered modern day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Israel.
Another article that seems more supportive of an eventual independent domestication of African taurine cattle. It points to the complex domestication history of cattle:
quote: Although archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest domestic cattle of the African continent were humpless B. taurus, and were present in North Africa, the eastern Sahara, and near the Nubian Nile by 7,550–6,950 cal. YBP (Wendorf and Schild, 2001), their origins remain controversial. Traditionally, it was held that B. taurus was introduced into Africa via the Isthmus of Suez from the Near East approximately 9,000–7,000 YBP (Epstein and Mason, 1984); however, some authors contend that the founding B. taurus of Africa was derived from an independent domestication of the indigenous aurochs, B. p. opisthonomus, in the eastern Sahara 9,500–8,900 cal. YBP
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