Donkeys were domesticated around 7,000 years ago in East Africa. And from there, about 4,500 years ago, the use of donkeys, especially as pack animals, spread to Europe and Asia. This is evident from the analysis of 207 modern donkeys, 49 wild asses and 31 ancient donkey genomes, published this week. in science. The current donkey populations in Kenya and the Horn of Africa are genetically closest to the first domesticated donkeys.
This means that the donkey has a very different history than the horse, which was domesticated about 5,500 years ago in various places in Eurasia and then spread fairly quickly over a large area. Furthermore, the current horses in the world almost all descend from a breeding line that was only set up in Persia around 300 AD.
Such restrictive inbreeding has never occurred in donkeys. In different regions of Eurasia and Africa, there are separate genetic lines of donkeys, dating back many thousands of years, but genetic analysis in science It also appears that a few percent of the genetic influence of wild donkeys exists everywhere and that there is also mutual genetic exchange between western and eastern Eurasia and Africa.
Mules were popular with the Romans more than donkeys
Archaeologically there were already strong indications for an African origin of the domestic donkey. In Egypt, for example, skeletal remains of donkeys dating back about 6,500 years have been found, which already seem to show signs of domestication with their small body size. There is also an engraved Egyptian drawing of 5,000 years old on which donkeys walk neatly behind each other: a clear indication of domestication. But until now, on the basis of mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited through the female line), it was often thought that there had also been a second domestication outside Africa.
The current study refutes that second origin of the domesticated donkey. In fact, the researchers led by Ludovic Orlando (Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse) write that the genetic information from the mitochondrial DNA, as well as that from the male Y chromosome, in the case of the donkey do not provide any insight into the domestication history.
Totally panicked
Most wild animals in Africa are unsuitable for domestication, zebras are indomitable and gazelles, for example, panic completely behind a fence. But the donkey has succeeded in Africa, just like the guinea fowl. The domestication of the donkey is probably related to the mobile livestock farming that became popular in East Africa exactly around 7,000 years ago, with cows, goats and sheep native to Eurasia. The spread in Africa of this mobile pastoral economy, which at that time barely existed in the Middle East, is probably related to the drying out of the Sahara, which was also taking hold at the time.
Among the 31 ancient donkey genomes, nine were also from a Late Roman villa (c. 200 to 500 AD) at Boinville-en-Woëvre, in northeastern France, showing unusually strong evidence of inbreeding but also relatively much influence of donkey lines that are genetically further away. That points to a dedicated breeding center, also because the donkeys were unusually large.
Mules were more popular with the Romans than donkeys: crosses of horse mares with donkey stallions. Because virtually no skeletons of horse mares or mules have been found at the villa, the researchers suspect that it was a kind of insemination center where mares were brought to be fertilized by a donkey. Or the owners traveled with their big donkeys to other farms to have the mares covered on site.
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