Herded and hunted goat genomes from the dawn of domestication in the Zagros Mountains

Abstract

Goats were among the first domestic animals and today are an important livestock species; archaeozoological evidence from the Zagros Mountains of western Iran indicates that goats were managed by the late ninth/early eighth millennium. We assess goat assemblages from Ganj Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein, two Aceramic Neolithic Zagros sites, using complementary archaeozoological and archaeogenomic approaches. Nuclear and mitochondrial genomes indicate that these goats were genetically diverse and ancestral to later domestic goats and already distinct from wild goats. Demographic profiles from bone remains, differential diversity patterns of uniparental markers, and presence of long runs of homozygosity reveal the practicing and consequences of management, thus expanding our understanding of the beginnings of animal husbandry. Keywords: caprine, ancient DNA, Neolithic, domestication, archaeozoology