Akrapovic Posted February 17, 2023 Posted February 17, 2023 They are best known for being beasts of burden. In some parts of the world it has been associated, perhaps unfairly, with terms of insult or derision. But in a French village some 174 miles (280 km) east of Paris, archaeologists have made a discovery that is helping to rewrite much of what we know about donkeys. At the site of a former Roman villa in the village of Boinville-en-Woëvre, a team unearthed the remains of several donkeys that would have dwarfed most species we are familiar with today. "They were giant donkeys," says Ludovic Orlando, director of the Toulouse Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics, at the Purpan Faculty of Medicine in Toulouse, France. "These specimens, which were genetically linked to donkeys in Africa, were larger than some types of horse." Orlando has been leading a project that sequenced the DNA of donkey skeletons. It was part of a much larger study to trace the origin of donkey domestication and its subsequent spread to other parts of the world. Skip We recommend and continue reading We recommend The shell of the turtle found in Pompeii. The surprising discovery of a pregnant turtle in the ruins of Pompeii Horses The breed of horses that questions the theory that these animals arrived in America with the European colonizers bear photo The bear that couldn't stop taking selfies in Colorado padayappa The unique story of the friendly elephant whose fame became a curse End of Recommend Research is providing surprising insights into the very history of our species through our relationship with these highly versatile animals. According to Orlando, the donkeys bred in the Roman villa of Boinville-en-Woëvre measured 155 cm from the ground to the withers (a ridge between the shoulder blades). The average height of donkeys today is 130 cm. The only modern donkey that comes close is the American mammoth donkey, also known as the jack mammoth, a species where males are unusually large and often used for breeding. Giant donkeys like those found at Boinville-en-Woëvre may have played an important but underappreciated role in the expansion of the Roman Empire and its subsequent attempts to hold on to this territory, Orlando says. Rock with carved donkeys. IMAGE SOURCEERIC LAFFORGUE/GETTY Caption, Petroglyphs on a rock in Saudi Arabia depicting donkeys, showing how important these animals were in ancient times. "Between the 2nd and 5th centuries, the Romans bred donkeys to produce mules, resulting from crossbreeding with horses, and which played a key role in transporting military equipment and goods," he says. "Although they were in Europe, they mixed with donkeys that came from West Africa." But the changes in the fate of the Roman Empire were probably instrumental in making this giant breed of donkey disappear as well. "If you don't have an empire thousands of miles wide, you don't need an animal that transports goods over long distances," says Orlando. "There was no economic incentive to continue producing mules." A trace of thousands of years To trace how donkeys have played their role throughout human history, an international team of 49 scientists from 37 laboratories sequenced the genomes of 31 ancient and 207 modern donkeys from around the world. Using genetic modeling techniques, they were able to track changes in the donkey po[CENSORED]tion over time. They found that donkeys were possibly first domesticated from wild donkeys and probably by herders around 7,000 years ago in Kenya and the Horn of Africa in East Africa. While this is a bit earlier than first thought, perhaps most surprisingly, the researchers also concluded that all modern donkeys living today appear to have descended from this single domestication event. Still, there are previous studies that suggest there may be other attempts to domesticate donkeys in Yemen. A municipal cleaning worker cleans the streets and behind him leads a donkey that carries the garbage bags. IMAGE SOURCE, ANADOLU AGENCY Caption, In some parts of the world donkeys are still essential, such as in Turkey, where they are used for municipal cleaning. Interestingly, this first donkey domestication in East Africa coincided with the aridity of a once-green Sahara. An abrupt weakening of the monsoon around 8,200 years ago, combined with increased human activity in the form of grazing and burning, led to decreased rainfall and gradual expansion of the desert and Sahel region. Domesticated donkeys may have been crucial in adapting to this increasingly harsh environment. link: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-64367883
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