Ancient DNA Analyses of Mongolian Aurochs Shows Connections to Ancient East Asian Cattle

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Biomolecular Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions Past and Present" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Taurine cattle were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and introduced to East Asia over 5000 years ago. Wild aurochs, the ancestor of domesticated cattle, were also present in East Asia during the introduction of domesticated cattle. It has been suggested that East Asian aurochs show some evidence of human management and may have interbred with taurine cattle, but genome-wide data from East Asian aurochs has thus far been limited. Here, we sequence low-coverage genomes of 23 ancient Mongolian bovids to assess whether wild aurochs admixed with ancient taurine cattle and determine whether ancestry from Mongolian aurochs can be found today in living cattle. Mongolian individuals postdating the arrival of taurine cattle to East Asia show evidence of admixture, with taurine cattle mitochondrial genomes. We also observe genetic relatedness between Mongolian aurochs and early domesticated cattle from China. However, there is very little East Asian aurochs ancestry in modern East Asian cattle, suggesting that this ancestry was lost over time. Future work in additional cattle populations in Mongolia and elsewhere in East Asia will further clarify the demographic history of East Asian cattle.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Global Perspectives on Biomolecular Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions Past and Present

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50834