Abstract
Goats were initially managed in the Near East approximately 10,000 years ago and spread across Eurasia as economically productive and environmentally resilient herd animals. While the geographic origins of domesticated goats (Capra hircus) in the Near East have been long-established in the zooarchaeological record and, more recently, further revealed in ancient genomes, the precise pathways by which goats spread across Asia during the early Bronze Age (ca. 3000 to 2500 cal BC) and later remain unclear. We analyzed sequences of hypervariable region 1 and cytochrome b gene in the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) of goats from archaeological sites along two proposed transmission pathways as well as geographically intermediary sites. Unexpectedly high genetic diversity was present in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC), indicated by mtDNA haplotypes representing common A lineages and rarer C and D lineages. High mtDNA diversity was also present in central Kazakhstan, while only mtDNA haplotypes of lineage A were observed from sites in the Northern Eurasian Steppe (NES). These findings suggest that herding communities living in montane ecosystems were drawing from genetically diverse goat populations, likely sourced from communities in the Iranian Plateau, that were sustained by repeated interaction and exchange. Notably, the mitochondrial genetic diversity associated with goats of the IAMC also extended into the semi-arid region of central Kazakhstan, while NES communities had goats reflecting an isolated founder population, possibly sourced via eastern Europe or the Caucasus region.
Highlights
Domesticated goats (Capra hircus) are at the subsistence core of pastoralist and farming communities around the world, providing dependable sources of meat, milk, fiber and hides [1]
The goats analyzed from sites in the Northern Eurasian Steppe (NES) appear to be consistent with a founder population that was likely present in eastern Europe after an earlier arrival of domesticated goats characterized by A haplotypes from the Near East via Eastern Europe or the Caucasus
In the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC), we observed a possible shift in the frequencies of mtDNA lineages from the early-middle Bronze Age (2700–1600 cal BC) to the late Bronze Age and Iron Age (1600–20 cal BC), which may be a result of reconfigured socio-economic networks that facilitated transfers of goats belonging to C and D lineages to the region from diverse genetic pools from agropastoralist communities located in the Iranian plateau
Summary
Domesticated goats (Capra hircus) are at the subsistence core of pastoralist and farming communities around the world, providing dependable sources of meat, milk, fiber and hides [1]. Wild bezoar (Capra aegagrus) goats were under initial management in various regions of the Near East by the mid-ninth millennium BC [5, 6]. By the eighth millennium BC, goats were closely controlled via husbandry practices that adjusted animal diets, movement, and herd demography favoring female survivorship [7,8,9,10,11], and exhibited considerable size diminution and loss of wild phenotypic traits associated with the domestication syndrome, indicating that people had effectively reconfigured the fitness landscape of managed goats and genetically isolated them from sympatric bezoars [12, 13]. Post-Neolithic domesticated goat populations across these regions show a collapse of this initial mtDNA phylogeographic pattern, leading to widespread dominance of A lineages [14], which today characterize 91% of domesticated goats world-wide [15,16,17,18,19]. Goat herds of later Bronze and Iron Age peoples might have been characterized by shifts in the relative abundance of mtDNA haplotypes on account of the geographic extent and intensity of social interaction spheres in which goats were bred and exchanged
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