Confirmed possibility of local african cattle domestication

[Midas]

I don't know if anybody has seen this but apparently while it's not conclusive it seems like there's pretty good evidence for local domestication of cattle in africa10,000 years ago and that it happened at the same time as in the middle east.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Cattle could had been domesticated independently in Africa at the same time as in the Middle East, that is around 10,000 years ago. <a href="https://t.co/ctC0QuJAsI">https://t.co/ctC0QuJAsI</a></p>&mdash; Nrken19 (@nrken19) <a href="">March 17, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

If this does turn out to be fully true I wonder how that changes our understanding of the rise of civilization in northeast africa.

@Shimbiris @The alchemist

 

[Garaad Awal]

Our E-M35 ancestors were the Greatest Africans

 

[Shimbiris]

Just saw this, yes. Will do more reading and future post, insha'Allah.

 

[cunug3aad]

We wuz caano munchers since dayyy I think the cows must have come from the civilisations of Egypt or something like that

 

[The alchemist]

Bro, I've said this. I remember the guys at Anthrogenica had a discussion with me on this. There were clear traits of handling large herds of wild aurochs in the southern western desert at the peripheral paleolithic, indicting an early domestication capture.

By the way, a few years ago, an obscure site stated that there was a paper coming out on this. I guess this is the one.

Let me drop my measured take at the time with people just denying talking about a Neolithic package you'd think they meant Amazon Prime deliveries.

Here is one of my responses:

Domestic cattle in Northeast Africa, and Africa in general, do have a pre-neolithic bottleneck with the cattle from the Levant from an mtDNA perspective (as a point of charitability, I will put to the side evidence from a certain review of the literature that highlights possible biases). But what differentiates African from European cattle is that there is much wider differentiation, i.e the African cattle had male wild aurochs introgression.

Interestingly, the Nile Valley long before the agricultural revolution had hunter-gatherer cultures that revolved around cattle, and certain controversial cultural sites can be a representation of that cultural evolution/continuity that lead to some form of handling of wild cattle before the so-called Neolithic package came in. There is also the idea that the ancient Egyptian cattle had a distinct skull and spinal column morphology from that of the South West Asian variation, although this can be a product of selective pressures.

While purely speculative, the presence of a few cattle, at least a third of which were subadult, in the Early Neolithic of Nabta–Kiseiba might reflect capture and taming of a few wild calves by foragers who lived part of the year with wild cattle near the Nile. Hunters would have possessed the behavioral knowledge and skills to lead such tamed animals to the autumn and winter foraging grounds, where at least some were slaughtered. Given a culture area in which cattle had ritual signification earlier and later, this possibility cannot be dismissed with the available data.

In sum, the early remains, which do appear to sort with cattle morphologically and to be in context, constitute tantalizing evidence for some kind of human handling, but well short of fully developed pastoralism. Rather than sweep these sparse remains under the scholarly rug, researchers should be alert to other such vestiges in the wider region of the Khartoum Variant ceramics, especially those that encompass environments that could have been habitats for wild cattle.

Wendorf and Schild (2001:667) make the point that cattle appear to have played a special role in the ideological systems of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers of the Nile valley, as reflected in the use of aurochs skulls to mark graves at the Qadan site of Tushka dating to 16,050–11,518 BC calibrated, two sigma (Stuiver and Reimer 2005;14,500–12,000 bp).

A review: https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._Domestication

I think this idea that the Neolithic package characterized everything in the Nile valley is very reductive in light of what we know (from an interdisciplinary approach). Technology and techniques were adopted in some cases, incorporated into an already existing collective human habit from long-stretching and distinct culture that did not necessarily amount to a complete pastoralist subsistence but some form of managing of local aurochs. An either-or situation is not possible, IMHO. A very important thing that has to be stated is that Africa is very unsampled in this regard compared to the other continents.

Lazy takes of complete “packages” that I should remind you is a model, to a degree takes from what can be an interesting and wide-covering discussion. It’s important to emphasize that this particular argument is time-dependent sensitive. I’m putting more emphasis on the pre-neolithic and early neolithic, later times of course amount to a stronger “neolithization” load through migration and transmission of products and knowledge from the Levant. Again, this does not entail complete cultural and practical turnover. Many things clearly expressed by a wide body of literature are of culturally indigenous continuity in a dynamic and culturally structured and robust landscape; the constitution was stable, is what I believe.

In many respects, a model explaining agricultural packages is pragmatically useful to understand things with short/simple steps, it is another thing to say these models completely encapsulate, or adequately specify how things really went on in a wide region with many cultures and people, there are exceptions too, with complex diffusion from a geographic perspective. A one-size fit all position is, to me a bad take, even irrespective of whatever amount of scattered data we can systematically infer from to get some kind of meaning upon the various perspective that may or may not correspond well with a matter. Again, I want to stress that it has some methodological implications in some aspects, but it does not apply equally to everything, which is a reasonable position to have. It must be contextualized accordingly.

 

[Midas]

We wuz caano munchers since dayyy I think the cows must have come from the civilisations of Egypt or something like that

We have been pastoralists since day 1 it seems. It seems impossible to me for there not to be a connection between the proto cushitic pastoralists and this cattle domestication event. They even mention in the article that a few millenia later around the 7th millenium b.c some people who lived directly off aquatic and coastal resoruces settled nearby ( cushitic fish taboo ?)

 

[NidarNidar]

I don't know if anybody has seen this but apparently while it's not conclusive it seems like there's pretty good evidence for local domestication of cattle in africa10,000 years ago and that it happened at the same time as in the middle east.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Cattle could had been domesticated independently in Africa at the same time as in the Middle East, that is around 10,000 years ago. <a href="https://t.co/ctC0QuJAsI">https://t.co/ctC0QuJAsI</a></p>&mdash; Nrken19 (@nrken19) <a href="">March 17, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

If this does turn out to be fully true I wonder how that changes our understanding of the rise of civilization in northeast africa.

@Shimbiris @The alchemist

Wrote about this a few weeks back.

While Proto Cushites intermixed with our group with high amounts of ancestral East African, this brought our SSA back up, while those that remained back near the Nile got more west Eurasian, this happened about 7,000 -8,000 years ago indicated by language split and the introduction/domestication of Cattle in Egypt/Sudan.

Spoiler: cattle domestication

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanga_cattle#cite_note-Marshall-28
View attachment 356081
African humid period.

 

[Midas]

Wrote about this a few weeks back.

While Proto Cushites intermixed with our group with high amounts of ancestral East African, this brought our SSA back up, while those that remained back near the Nile got more west Eurasian, this happened about 7,000 -8,000 years ago indicated by language split and the introduction/domestication of Cattle in Egypt/Sudan.

Spoiler: cattle domestication

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanga_cattle#cite_note-Marshall-28
View attachment 356081
African humid period.

But isn't the ancestoral east african group the one that migrated up north and then mixed with eurasians to create proto afroasiatic ?

 

[Shimbiris]

Independent cattle domestication; the first evidence of old world pottery west of China; independent donkey domestication; possible first riders of animals in history and beat steppe ninjas to mounted archery; first incense burners; originators of coffee... NE Africans is overachievers, wallahi.

 

[NidarNidar]

But isn't the ancestoral east african group the one that migrated up north and then mixed with eurasians to create proto afroasiatic ?

Sorry, I directly copy and pasted that, should have added some context, our intermixing probably happened at the same time, this AEA component is highest in Nilotes and is the majority of our SSA ancestry, E-V32 TMRCA is about 7,000 ago, we inhabited the red sea hills area before migrating further south to the horn, Beja still live in this area.

Independent cattle domestication; the first evidence of old world pottery west of China; independent donkey domestication; possible first riders of animals in history and beat steppe ninjas to mounted archery; first incense burners; originators of coffee... NE Africans is overachievers, wallahi.

We probably rode cattle before the domestication of the donkey.

 

[Midas]

Sorry I directly copy and pasted that, should have added some context, our intermixing probably happened at the same time.


We probably rode cattle before the domestication of the donkey.

Kinda crazy to think that proto cushtic emerged at the beginning of the neolithic .

 

[Shimbiris]

Kinda crazy to think that proto cushtic emerged at the beginning of the neolithic .

It's crazy to think our single language branch within AA is older than the entire Indo-European language family. When you compare East Cushitic to something like Agaw in terms of when they diverged you're looking at time scales comparable to PIE and Modern Greek. IE is a baby language family in comparison to ayeeyo Afrasian.

 

[Midas]

It's crazy to think our single language branch within AA is older than the entire Indo-European language family. When you compare East Cushitic to something like Agaw in terms of when they diverged you're looking at time scales comparable to PIE and Modern Greek. IE is a baby language family in comparison to ayeeyo Afrasian.

What makes this even more wild is the continuity. Modern eygptians only share 50% of their DNA with old kingdom eygptians and this about the same for northern Europeans who onl have 50% yamnnya at most. Whereas like 90% of our ancestry has basically remain unchanged since the early Neolithic.

 

[Midas]

Maybe the people who say somalis have an extreme phenotype are on to something. I mean look at the facial reconstructions for yamnyaa or other early groups.

 

[Shimbiris]

What makes this even more wild is the continuity. Modern eygptians only share 50% of their DNA with old kingdom eygptians and this about the same for northern Europeans who onl have 50% yamnnya at most. Whereas like 90% of our ancestry has basically remain unchanged since the early Neolithic.

Idk about 90% but yes, I've noticed now for many years that Horners still seem overwhelmingly descended from ancient Cushites. I think "Ethio-Somali" basically closely represents a real population that was probably what A-Group Nubians looked like who I believe in turn were probably what earlier AAs (Cushitic-Semitic-Berber speakers) looked like with maybe lower AEA. We even mostly still carry their Y-DNA. 60-70% or more of all Horner males are some form of M35 lineage.

It's gonna ruffle some feathers but if and when we narrow down the exact cultural horizon that was the PAA folks, Horners will probably be the people most descended from them, would be my wager.

 

[NidarNidar]

Kinda crazy to think that proto cushtic emerged at the beginning of the neolithic .

edited my post, and added some context.

What makes this even more wild is the continuity. Modern eygptians only share 50% of their DNA with old kingdom eygptians and this about the same for northern Europeans who onl have 50% yamnnya at most. Whereas like 90% of our ancestry has basically remain unchanged since the early Neolithic.

60/40 going strong still xD, I'm guessing the original AE were roughly 50/50 before continuous migrations diluted them.


Probably one of the best videos about it.

What makes this even more wild is the continuity. Modern eygptians only share 50% of their DNA with old kingdom eygptians and this about the same for northern Europeans who onl have 50% yamnnya at most. Whereas like 90% of our ancestry has basically remain unchanged since the early Neolithic.

• R1b: Dominates Western Europe (50-80%).
• R1a: Dominates Eastern Europe (30-60%).
• I1: Common in Scandinavia (35-40%).
• I2: Common in the Balkans (20-30%).
• E1b1b: Common in the Balkans and Southern Europe (20-30%).
• J2: Common in Southern Europe (10-20%).
• N1c: Common in Northeastern Europe (10-60%).

Yamnaya basically xoog EEF, miskins got decimated but atleast the viking got revenge for them there culture is about 5,000 years old, and without the Greeks(E-V13) who taught the Romans civilisation, they would still be back water people.

 

[Midas]

Idk about 90% but yes, I've noticed now for many years that Horners still seem overwhelmingly descended from ancient Cushites. I think "Ethio-Somali" basically closely represents a real population that was probably what A-Group Nubians looked like who I believe in turn were probably what earlier AAs (Cushitic-Semitic-Berber speakers) looked like with maybe lower AEA. We even mostly still carry their Y-DNA. 60-70% or more of all Horner males are some form of M35 lineage.

It's gonna ruffle some feathers but if and when we narrow down the exact cultural horizon that was the PAA folks, Horners will probably be the people most descended from them, would be my wager.

Yeah maybe 90% is a bit much. I definitely also think horners will probably share the most. Especially considering all the pouplation changes in the other regions

 

[Midas]

edited my post, and added some context.

60/40 going strong still xD, I'm guessing the original AE were roughly 50/50 before continuous migrations diluted them.


Probably one of the best videos about it.

Very interesting video. Although I would say they probably looked a lot blacker than what most people would think. Look at what the half yemeni and half somalis look like. Those dudes are probaly as eurasian shifted as an old kingdom eygptian would have been . Yet they look Somali/horner

 

[Shimbiris]

Yeah maybe 90% is a bit much. I definitely also think horners will probably share the most. Especially considering all the pouplation changes in the other regions

Spoiler

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[Rayaale]

We have been pastoralists since day 1 it seems. It seems impossible to me for there not to be a connection between the proto cushitic pastoralists and this cattle domestication event. They even mention in the article that a few millenia later around the 7th millenium b.c some people who lived directly off aquatic and coastal resoruces settled nearby ( cushitic fish taboo ?)

Most of the cattle as of now is located in the Southern Somalia and northern Kenya