The great donkey mystery has been solved! Wait, you didn’t know there was a mystery?
We’re here to tell you that the when-and-where of how the humble donkey became man’s go-to beast of burden has never been uncovered, until now. A new study published in Science using DNA from over 200 donkeys from around the world proved that they were domesticated in East Africa around 7,000 years ago.
The researchers collected 207 genomes from living donkeys in 31 countries and from 31 ancient donkeys who were thought to have lived between 100 and 4,000 years ago, as well as 15 wild equids. The DNA was sequenced and compared, with the result being that all donkeys can trace their family tree to one domestication event in East Africa, around 5000 B.C.