Cattle Ancestry, Sheep, too.

Breaking Moos! For decades scientists believed cattle were domesticated twice in ancient history: humpless taurine cattle in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East about 10,500 years ago, and humped zebu cattle in South Asia near the Indus Valley. A new 2026 genetics study (Miraszek et al., bioRxiv preprint) compared whole genomes from cattle, the extinct aurochs, gaur, banteng, and a 14,000-year-old ancient aurochs from Siberia. The evidence suggests cattle were domesticated only once. Zebu cattle formed when early farmers brought domestic cattle east and they hybridized with wild Indian aurochs. Those wild aurochs had already mixed with a gaur-like wild cattle species hundreds of thousands of years earlier. This is a story about animal evolution, ancient DNA, hybridization, archaeology, and human history, showing how ancient farmers and wild animals shaped the cows we have today. Sheep, too.

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