DNA study finds
Donkey domestication happened 7,000 years ago in Africa
Saturday, 10 September 2022
WASHINGTON, Sept 09 (AFP): Despite transforming history as beasts of burden essential for transporting goods and people, the humble donkey has long been woefully understudied.
But scientists on Thursday took a big step towards clarifying the species' origins with a comprehensive genomic analysis of 238 ancient and modern donkeys, finding they were likely domesticated in a single event in eastern Africa some 7,000 years ago.
The paper, published in the journal Science, was the result of an international collaboration led by Evelyn Todd at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, France.
"Donkeys subsequently spread into Eurasia from ~2500 BCE, and Central and Eastern Asian subpopulations differentiated ~2000 to 1000 BCE," the team wrote.