“The history of the donkey has puzzled scientists for years.”
DNA has great potential for unraveling humankind’s shared history with our animal companions. In 2021, Orlando and his colleagues
Archaeological evidence — including a 5,000-year-old Egyptian tablet depicting marching asses, sheep and cattle — zeroed in on Africa as the most probable contender. But genetic studies attempting to pin down when and where donkeys were domesticated have been largely inconclusive. By comparing these genomes with those of wild asses, the researchers found that all donkeys could trace their lineage back to a single domestication event in East Africa, perhaps in the Horn of Africa, around 5000 B.C. From there, domesticated donkeys spread to the rest of the continent and into Europe and Asia, where they formed genetically distinct groups based on region. Humans have now brought donkeys to nearly every continent on Earth, carrying their genetic legacy with them.
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