History of the World Revealed in the Genes of Cows

The study of genes from over 100 species of domesticated cattle reveals the dawn of civilisation and the complex web of migrations that followed

If one animal changed the course of history, there’s a good argument that it was the cow. The domestication of aurochs (wild ox) some 10,000 years ago changed the nature of human existence.

Before that, humans were hunter gatherers who devoted all their time to the pursuit of foodstuffs (little has changed in some parts of America).

After the domestication of cattle and certain grasses, the new technology of farming generated more food, allowing humans to develop a broader range of skills, to live in towns and cities and to kick start the thing we now know as civilisation.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The process of animal domestication has a huge genetic impact. That means researchers can piece together an accurate chronology of the changes by analysing the DNA of modern breeds.

This has revealed much about the human impact on the evolution of cats, dogs, grasses and so on.

Indeed, the study of less welcome creatures such as lice has revealed when our ancestors lost their body hair (about 6 millions years ago), while the study of intestinal parasites reveals when we last shared meals with lions on the plains of Africa (about 2 million years ago).

So it will come as no surprise that bovine genetics can be equally revealing. Today, Jared Decker at the University of Missouri in Columbia and a few pals demonstrate the power of this technique with the most comprehensive study of cattle genes ever made. “We have assembled a genomic data set which represents the largest population sampling of any mammalian species,” they say.

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