Cattle were domesticated in the Middle East before being brought to Africa by migrating humans some 10,000 years ago.
Researchers previously thought that African cattle were domesticated there. To better understand this history, Jared Decker and Jeremy Taylor at the University of Missouri in Columbia and their colleagues analysed the DNA of 134 breeds of domesticated cattle to establish the relationships between them. The authors found that cattle imported from the Middle East bred with wild species to produce the African animals seen today.
Mixing of native cattle with imported breeds occurred extensively worldwide. For example, American feral breeds are descended from cattle that were brought in from Spain and India.
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Cattle tamed by moving and mixing. Nature 508, 11 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/508011d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/508011d
