Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep
Kevin G. Daly, Victoria E. Mullin, Andrew J. Hare, Áine Halpin, Valeria Mattiangeli, Matthew D. Teasdale, Conor Rossi, S. Geiger, Stefan Krebs, Ivica Međugorac, Edson Sandoval‐Castellanos, Mihriban Özbaşaran, Güneş Duru, Sevil Gülçur, Nadja Pöllath, Matthew J. Collins, Laurent Frantz, Emmanuelle Vila, Petăr Zidarov, Simon Stoddart, Bazartseren Boldgiv, Ludovic Orlando, Mike Parker Pearson, Jacqui Mulville, Igor Askeyev, Arthur Askeyev, Oleg Askeyev, Dilyara N. Shaymuratova, Youri van den Hurk, Andrea Zeeb‐Lanz, Rose‐Marie Arbogast, Helmut Hemmer, Hossein Davoudi, Sarieh Amiri, Sanaz Beizaee Doost, Delphine Decruyenaere, Homa Fathi, Roya Khazaeli, Yousef Hassanzadeh, Alireza Sardari, Johanna Lhuillier, Mostafa Abdolahi, Geoffrey D. Summers, Catherine Marro, Veli Bakhshaliyev, Rémi Berthon, Canan Çakırlar, Norbert Benecke, Amelie Scheu, Joachim Bürger, Eberhard Sauer, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Benjamin S. Arbuckle, Hijlke Buitenhuis, Lionel Gourichon, Jelena Bulatović, Terry O’Connor, David Orton, Mindia Jalabadze, Stephen Rhodes, Michael Chazan, Vecihi Özkaya, Melinda A. Zeder, Levent Atıcı, Marjan Mashkour, Joris Peters, Daniel G. Bradley
Abstract
) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Genomes from Central Türkiye ~8000 BCE are genetically proximal to the domestic origins of sheep but do not fully explain the ancestry of later populations, suggesting a mosaic of wild ancestries. Genomic signatures indicate selection by ancient herders for pigmentation patterns, hornedness, and growth rate. Although the first European sheep flocks derive from Türkiye, in a notable parallel with ancient human genome discoveries, we detected a major influx of Western steppe-related ancestry in the Bronze Age.