Origin of cattle breeds in East Africa and introduction to general breeding science: A – review

Since the domestication of cattle more than 10,000 years ago, cattle have been critical in the shift of human society from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farming communities across most of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Although our understanding of ancestral population relationships is limited, cattle domestication is thought to have occurred on two or three occasions, giving rise to the taurine (B. taurus) and indicine (B. indicus) species, which share a common ancestor with the aurochs (B. primigenius) 250,000 years ago. Indicine and taurine cattle were domesticated in the Indus Valley and the Fertile Crescent, respectively; however, a third domestication event for taurine has been hypothesized in Egypt's Western Desert. Because of their recent split, African indicine cattle share a lot of genetic variation with Asian indicine cattle, as well as with African taurine cattle through gene flow. Although further research is needed to detangle the complicated human-mediated dispersion patterns of domestic cattle, scenarios involving unidirectional or bidirectional migratory events between European taurine and Asian indicine cattle are also feasible. As a result, our research contributes to a better understanding of the impact of previous demographic history on present cow genetic variation, laying the groundwork for future research into alternate migration pathways for early domestic populations.