History Forum / General / Archaeology / January 2007

Two recent pieces about domestication of cows in Europe.
First an abstract of a paper (Scheu et al), then a doctoral
thesis (Anderung).
The 20 pp introduction of Anderung is also a good read on
genetics and domestication of sheep, goat, pig, horse and
cow.
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Scheu, A.; J. Burger; S. Hartz, U. Schmölcke, D. Heinrich,
A. Tresset & R. Bollongino (2006)
"Aurochs or domesticated cattle? Ancient DNA analyses
of early animal husbandry in Northern Germany"
Second International Symposium on  Biomolecular
Archaeology Stockholm, Sweden, 7-9 September 2006
http://tinyurl.com/2p7wrj [all abstracts. PDF 89 pp, 420 kb]

  "For several hundred years beginning in approximately
   5450 BC, the Mesolithic Ertebølle/Ellerbek culture in
   the Southwest Baltic region coexisted with adjacent
   Neolithic cultures to the south and east of the river
   Elbe. During this time of coexistence, acculturation
   processes led to the adoption of Neolithic elements
   by the Mesolithic population of East Holstein.
   Recovered artifacts evidence regular contact with
   farming cultures and archaeo-palynological analyses
   show that agriculture may even have been practiced
   on a small scale. This assumption is supported by
   archaeo-zoological analyses showing that Mesolithic
   bone samples from the Rosenhof LA 58 site are from
   fully domesticated cattle.

   However, skepticism of these results has often
   resulted from the professed diagnostic problem of
   overlap in size between small female aurochs and
   large male cattle. In addition, morphological analyses
   can give no unequivocal information on whether the
   presumed cattle are the result of independent
   domestication of indigenous aurochs populations, or
   domesticated animals introduced through direct
   contact with Neolithic settlers.

   To contribute to clarification of these questions, we
   analyzed ancient mt- and ncDNA of several presumed
   domesticated cattle from the site Rosenhof LA 58. In
   addition to haplotype determination on the basis of
   the HVR I region within the mitochondrial d-loop, we
   successfully amplified parts of zinc finger genes on
   the X- and Y-chromosomes for sexing.

   The results show that all bone samples stem from
   female individuals. However, only one of these
   samples revealed a lineage that occurs in
   domesticated cattle."

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Anderung, Cecilia (2006)
"Genetic Analyses of Bovid Remains and the Origin of
Early European Cattle"
http://tinyurl.com/2fz2xb
[Diva/Uppsala. full text PDF 66 pp, 815 kb]

Abstract
  "The aurochs Bos primigenius, extinct since 1627,
   was the wild progenitor of cattle. It is believed that all
   European cattle originate from one domestication
   event in the Near East 10 000 years ago. However,
   it is evident from the archaeological record that the
   aurochs survived into historic time and spent many
   years existing alongside domestic cattle. Thus, a
   question posed is whether aurochsen were locally
   domesticated or incorporated into early domestic
   cattle stock.

   In this thesis, genetic techniques are applied to
   ancient and modern DNA from bovids in order to study
   questions relating to the origin of early European
   cattle. DNA from ancient specimens is fragmented
   and in greatly reduced quantity. Therefore
   mitochondrial DNA, present in many copies in the
   living cell, has long been dominating the ancient DNA
   research field. Analyses of ancient DNA presented in
   this work are based on both mitochondrial DNA and
   nuclear DNA, through the study of Single Nuclear
   Polymorohism (SNPs). A method for typing ancient
   SNPs was developed and applied to ancient cattle
   bones.

   Mitochondrial DNA of cattle is structured into five
   geographically distributed lineages, the dominant
   lineage in Europe is also found in the Near East
   where additional lineages are found. This pattern has
   been attributed to the proposed domestication event
   in the Near East from where cattle carrying the single
   lineage were brought to Europe.
   However, the results presented here show that cattle
   domestication was more complicated than previously
   suggested. SNP data from extant cattle and bones
   from cattle and aurochs point towards a hybridisation
   event. European cattle appear indeed to have been
   domesticated in the Near East and brought in to the
   European continent from there. However, once in
   Europe, hybridisation with local aurochsen took place.
   It appears therefore that today's cattle descend both
   from both Anatolian and European aurochsen."
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p.a.