TCD scientists’ DNA analysis shows Middle Eastern Neolithic origin for Domestic Cattle
Posted on: 13 May 2007
Scientists from the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin, with collaborators, report the first comprehensive ancient DNA study of the extinct aurochs, the wild progenitor of modern cattle, from across North and Central Europe.
About 10,000 years ago, Europe’s earliest farmers established an economy based on the use and management of domesticated plants and animals that still underpins the continent’s prosperity today. A key question for archaeologists and geneticists has been whether livestock species were domesticated locally in Europe, or whether domestic forms were brought from the Near East by migrating farmers.
The extinct auroch was one of the largest land mammals living in Europe, prior to its extinction in the 17th century. Aurochs were a large type of cattle, slightly smaller than an elephant in size and, apart from northern Scandinavia, northern Russia and Ireland, ranged all over the Eurasian continent. It is this wide geographical distribution that makes it tantalising to speculate about possible European centres of cattle domestication.
A study of archaeological aurochs remains, published recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, has sought to answer this question using ancient DNA technology. Together with 36 internationally renowned colleagues, Dr. Ceiridwen Edwards and Prof Daniel Bradley from Trinity College Dublin, in collaboration with Dr. Ruth Bollongino and Prof. Joachim Burger from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, generated molecular genetic DNA from aurochs skeletons and compared these to data from pre-historic and modern domestic cattle.
Extensive sampling across Europe demonstrated a continuity of the aurochs population across space and time, from the Last Glacial Maximum through the Holocene. The study could find no evidence of inter-breeding between wild aurochs and domestic cattle, suggesting that domestic forms were kept apart from their wild counterparts, and that Europe’s modern cattle breeds are, in fact, ancient Neolithic immigrants rather than local domesticates.
But where did European domestic cattle originate? Prior to this study it had only been possible to amplify ancient DNA from very few Near Eastern cattle remains, due to poor preservation conditions for DNA in this arid region. After exhaustive attempts, the teams in Dublin and Mainz obtained the earliest genetic evidence for domestication in the Fertile Crescent, leading to the conclusion that the ancestors of our current domestic cattle displaced European aurochs in the process of migration out of the Near East during the Neolithic.
The study was funded jointly by the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology (grants SC/1999/409 and SC/2002/510) and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (grant 03BUX1MZ).