Trinity researcher Dr Kevin Daly, alongside a team of colleagues, has found that goats were likely one of the first domesticated animals.
They showed that goats were domesticated as early as 10,000 years ago in the area around the Zagros mountains in Iran. Dogs, however, were the first domesticated group around 14,000 years ago.
In an article in NewScientistDaly, Research Fellow in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology and the first author of the paper, said : “By 10,000 years ago, we have this lining up of archaeological and genetic data that seems to suggest that we have the first population of managed goats.”
Daly and a team of researchers surveyed goat fossils in Gani Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein, two mountains in the Zagros Mountains, where there is evidence of habitation between 8,200 and 7,600 BC.
From DNA analysis on preserved goat parts the researchers saw that there were two distinct groups of goats present in the region with one being related to modern domestic goats and the other to wild goats. This indicates that goats were not simply kept but domesticated even further as the wild-type goats were likely hunted.
According to Daly, “this is the earliest genetic evidence of goat domestication”.
“It’s looking more and more like the domestication of goats was probably primarily in or near the Zagros region.”
Further evidence inferred from the study by Daly suggests that sheep and goats preceded other animals such as cattle and pigs due to the fact that they are smaller and easier to keep under control.
The researchers also found that a certain set of genes in the remains which can only be inherited along the female line is present in modern domestic goats, indicating that they are direct descendents of the goats from 10,000 years ago.
In an article in Science Magazine Dr David MacHugh an animal geneticist at University College Dublin who was not part of the research said that this study appears to have found the “ground zero for goat domestication, or close to it”.
Goats were central to the progression of human society so being able to discern when and where they were first domesticated is to find out “one of the most pivotal moments in prehistory”, according to MacHugh.
In a comment to Science Magazine professor of population genetics at Trinity, Dan Bradley said: “Ancient DNA continues to allow us to plumb the depths of ancient prehistory and examine the origins of the world’s first livestock herds. Over 10,000 years ago, early animal farmers were practising husbandry with a genetic legacy that continues today.”
The research article is available to read through the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
