Early history of European domestic cattle as revealed by ancient DNA

Abstract

We present an extensive ancient DNA analysis of mainly Neolithic cattle bones sampled from archaeological sites along the route of Neolithic expansion, from Turkey to North-Central Europe and Britain. We place this first reasonable population sample of Neolithic cattle mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in context to illustrate the continuity of haplotype variation patterns from the first European domestic cattle to the present. Interestingly, the dominant Central European pattern, a starburst phylogeny around the modal sequence, T3, has a Neolithic origin, and the reduced diversity within this cluster in the ancient samples accords with their shorter history of post-domestic accumulation of mutation.

Figure 1

Reduced median phylogenetic networks constructed for B. taurus mtDNA sequences, using 240 bp of the control region (ancient populations include only 189 bp of sequence, but no changes are seen in the 50 bp covered by the primers in any modern samples; Troy et al. 2001). (a) The relationships between the five central, primary B. taurus haplotypes, T, T1, T2, T3 and T4 (Troy et al. 2001; Mannen et al. 2004). Two modern regional haplotype groups are represented: (b) the Middle East and (c) mainland Europe (Troy et al. 2001), as well as the two ancient populations, grouped into time regions of (d) Neolithic and (e) Bronze Age.

Figure 2

A two-dimensional MDS plot, drawn using data from a 189 bp region of the control region, summarizing genetic distances among nine extant populations and the two ancient populations. The proportion of the data explaining the first two principal coordinates, the r²-value, is shown.