What is the origin of cattle ; Africa, India or elsewhere?

Question

What is the origin of cattle ; Africa, India or elsewhere?

Answer 1

Prehistoric cattle originated many thousands of years ago in India and by early Pleistocene times had migrated to Europe, North Africa, and the rest of Asia. Modern cattle are descendants of two species--the wild cattle of Europe and the humpbacked cattle of Asia

Answer 2

Cattle are descended from the aurochs, a huge wild bovid found in Europe up until a few thousand years after the end of the Ice Age.

Answer 3

VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW

Current published text states that origins of all domesticated cattle can be traced back to two main centres, Asian (Bos indicus) and the Near East-European (Bos taurus). Due to recent improved technology in the methods of genetic identification and new archaeological findings, there is now believed to be a third origin, which was a native African taurine, centred in the Saharan Belt of Africa (Bos taurus),.

"Genetics studies at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) have shown that the genetic composition of the Kenyan Boran is unique. If the genetic background of the Kenyan Boran is predominantly zebu, the breed also contains taurine background of two separate origins. A European-Near East taurine background of some antiquity and most likely also from recent crossbreeding and an African indigenous taurine background which is not found in any Asian zebu crosses such as Sahiwal or Brahman" (O.Hanotte. See also M.Okomo et al. 1998, J.E.O Rege et al. 2001).  As revealed by O.Hanotte at ILRI, they have shown that the Boran genome contains three distinct genetic influences. Other than the Zebu influence (Bos indicus), there are influences from both the Near East-European Bos Taurus as well as a distinct influence from native African Bos tarus. The predominant influence was however from the Zebu.

"The Zebus of the second wave have thoracic humps and started to come into north-east Africa in the 4th century AD, but the major importations date only from the time of the Arab invasions which started in 669 AD." "The Zebu were becoming common in Kenya in the 15th century." Ian Mason, (Factors Influencing the World Distribution of Beef Cattle. F.A.O.1974).

From this 'genetic package', came the Borana cattle in Ethiopia, which became the dominant breed type of the region known as the East African Shorthorned Zebu. They are typically the cattle kept by the Borana in Southern Ethiopia and the Somali and Orma tribes of Kenya. From these types came the Boran as adopted by commercial cattlemen in Kenya who developed the breed we see today.  The Boran now found in Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Australia and USA originated from genetic exports of Kenyan Boran cattle between the 1970's and 1990's. The breed in Zimbabwe and South Africa came from embryos exported from the excellent facility on Ol Pejeta Ranch at Nanyuki, Kenya, during 1994 and 2000.

http://www.borankenya.org/boran_cattle_o...

Genetics has the potential to provide a novel layer of information pertaining to the origins and relationships of domestic cattle. While it is important not to overstate the power of archeological inference from genetic data, some previously widespread conjectures are inevitably contradicted with the addition of new information. Conjectures regarding domesticated cattle that fall into this category include a single domestication event with the development of Bos indicus breeds from earlier Bos taurus domesticates; the domestication of a third type of cattle in Africa having an intermediate morphology between the two taxa; and the special status of the Jersey breed as a European type with some exotic influences. In reality, a wide-ranging survey of the genetic variation of modern cattle reveals that they all derive from either zebu or taurine progenitors or are hybrids of the two. The quantitative divergence between Bos indicus and Bos taurus strongly supports a predomestic separation; that between African and European taurines also suggests genetic input from native aurochsen populations on each continent. Patterns of genetic variants assayed from paternally, maternally, and biparentally inherited genetic systems reveal that extensive hybridization of the two subspecies is part of the ancestry of Northern Indian, peripheral European, and almost all African cattle breeds. In Africa, which is the most extensive hybrid zone, the sexual asymmetry of the process of zebu introgression.

. . the magnitude of estimates of the divergence between Bos indicus and Bos taurus are consistently of the order of hundreds of thousands of years BP and constitute a strong argument for the domestication, less than 10,000 years BP, of two biologically separate strains of aurochsen. These data are simply not consistent with a view that all cattle developed from a single wild ancestral strain.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:i-4...

It is thought that modern cattle were domesticated from a single wide-ranging Pleistocene species, the wild aurochs Bos Primigenius, which was distributed throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa. However, the details have been hard to discern as it is difficult to distinguish the domestic breeds (B. taurus in Africa and Europe, B. indicus in Asia) from the wild progenitor archaeologically. Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA has indicated not only a deep split between an Asian and an African-European cluster, but also a shallow split between African and European cattle, suggesting three separate domestic events. It is still not clear, however, whether or not all European cattle are derived from stock domesticated in Western Asia, as is the case with ovicaprids and some cereals.

The origins of Bos lineages:

The European B. primigenius sequences cluster slightly more closely with extant European cattle, and certainly with taurine cattle rather than B. indicus. Extant B. taurus and B. indicus may be cross-bred to produce viable offspring. As B. primigenius and B. taurus are phylogenetically more closely related it seems likely they could have inter-bred and as such should be considered a single species.  The novel sequences obtained from Pleistocene samples suggests that there was a diverse population of aurochs in the Pleistocene (Bailey et al., 1996: 1471).

Neolithic expansion of Bos:

Bailey et al (1996) estimate a minimum expansion time of 3500-4700 Ma BP, but these values are associated with a large margin of error. An expansion may have been caused by the introduction of modern farming methods, the establishment of cattle breeds, the introduction of farming in the Neolithic or as a result of post-glacial environmental change.

The lack of clustering by breed and lack of distinction between beef and dairy cattle suggests haplotypes pre-date modern farming methods and breed establishment. The presence of closely related haplotypes in the medieval period suggests the expansion took place before this, and a similar haplotype from Bronze Age Egypt may suggest it takes place even before this date. The existence of this haplotype is consistent with an origin for the European expansion in the vicinity of the Middle East and indicates that Egyptian cattle at this stage shared elements of the European gene pool. Overall, this points to a Neolithic origin for the European expansion. An alternative explanation, however, is that the expansion was not human-facilitated, but by post-glacial environmental change.

The occurrence of long-branch lineages predominantly in the European island populations suggests there may have been inclusion of local aurochsen amongst domesticates in Northern Europe. The diversity of insular cattle is twice as great as that of Continental breeds, implying a greater time-depth on the continent.

The levels and patterns of mitochondrial diversity do not point towards a single Near Eastern origin for African and European cattle within the 10,000 year time frame of domestic history. Instead it is most suggestive of two domestic origins that were either temporally or spatially separate and that involved divergent strains of taurine progenitors. This is consistent with a Near Eastern origin for European cattle and an African origin for the breeds of that continent. The dating of the putative African population expansion, although a rough estimate, seems older than that deduced in European patterns of variation. This provides tentative support for an earlier and possible Saharan domestication process that may have been independent of the later Near Eastern influences, which are detectable through the presence of ovicaprid herding.

http://archaeozoo.wordpress.com/2007/08/...

http://www.irishscientist.ie/2001/conten...  (great link)

Many studies have shown that the deepest root in cattle phylogeny occurs between European cattle and those of India, with African zebu and crossbred taurines occupying intermediate positions

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:i-4...  (way too long but very interesting link!)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article...

Answer 4

Assuming there was a single origin would be unwise.  African breeds are thought to have been domesticated in Africa.  Non-African breeds had at least one source of origin, but there may have been more.  Therefore, the origins of domestic cattle were in several places.