Abstract
Cattle domestication and the complex histories of East Asian cattle breeds warrant further investigation. Through analysing the genomes of 49 modern breeds and eight East Asian ancient samples, worldwide cattle are consistently classified into five continental groups based on Y-chromosome haplotypes and autosomal variants. We find that East Asian cattle populations are mainly composed of three distinct ancestries, including an earlier East Asian taurine ancestry that reached China at least ~3.9 kya, a later introduced Eurasian taurine ancestry, and a novel Chinese indicine ancestry that diverged from Indian indicine approximately 36.6–49.6 kya. We also report historic introgression events that helped domestic cattle from southern China and the Tibetan Plateau achieve rapid adaptation by acquiring ~2.93% and ~1.22% of their genomes from banteng and yak, respectively. Our findings provide new insights into the evolutionary history of cattle and the importance of introgression in adaptation of cattle to new environmental challenges in East Asia.
Highlights
Cattle domestication and the complex histories of East Asian cattle breeds warrant further investigation
Archaeological evidence suggested that B. taurus may have been imported into East Asia from West Asia during the late Neolithic period[8,13] and B. indicus may have dispersed from the Indian subcontinent to East Asia at a later stage, from 3500 to 2500 YBP14,15, which led the hybridisation between taurine and indicine cattle in Central China[10,11]
All animals were assigned to 10 geographical regions following their sources: Northeast Asia; Northwest China; North-Central China; Tibetan Plateau; South China; India-Pakistan; the Middle East; Africa; West Europe; and Central-South Europe (Supplementary Table 2)
Summary
Cattle domestication and the complex histories of East Asian cattle breeds warrant further investigation. Archaeological evidence suggested that B. taurus may have been imported into East Asia from West Asia during the late Neolithic period (between 5000 and 4000 YBP)[8,13] and B. indicus may have dispersed from the Indian subcontinent to East Asia at a later stage, from 3500 to 2500 YBP14,15, which led the hybridisation between taurine and indicine cattle in Central China[10,11]. Based on genomic SNP array data, previous studies provided evidence of introgression within the genus Bos, such as Bos javanicus (banteng) introgression into Chinese Hainan cattle and bovine introgression into Mongolian yak in East Asia[6,16]. All these events contributed to the complex histories of East Asian cattle. Africa West Europe Central-South Europe Middle East Northwest China Tibet, China North-Cental China Northeast Asia South China India-Pakistan b
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