Insight into the introduction of domestic cattle and the process of Neolithization to the Spanish region Galicia by genetic evidence

Abstract

Domestic cattle were brought to Spain by early settlers and agricultural societies. Due to missing Neolithic sites in the Spanish region of Galicia, very little is known about this process in this region. We sampled 18 cattle subfossils from different ages and different mountain caves in Galicia, of which 11 were subject to sequencing of the mitochondrial genome and phylogenetic analysis, to provide insight into the introduction of cattle to this region. We detected high similarity between samples from different time periods and were able to compare the time frame of the first domesticated cattle in Galicia to data from the connecting region of Cantabria to show a plausible connection between the Neolithization of these two regions. Our data shows a close relationship of the early domesticated cattle of Galicia and modern cow breeds and gives a general insight into cattle phylogeny. We conclude that settlers migrated to this region of Spain from Europe and introduced common European breeds to Galicia.

Read Length Dominates Phylogenetic Placement Accuracy of Ancient DNA Reads

“…We sought to include a wide range of datasets, including standard phylogenetic placement applications for environmental DNA (Srinivasan et al, 2012; Sunagawa et al, 2015; Mahé et al, 2017), but also datasets from prior aDNA studies. These datasets comprise for the most part larger animals, such as the Aurochs (Gurke et al, 2021), Land Snails (Psonis et al, 2022a), Hippos (Psonis et al, 2022b), and Elephants (Psonis et al, 2020). These datasets therefore represent a broad spectrum of aDNA identification tasks.…”

The mtDNA D-Loop Legacy of Cattle: Fluctuations in Diversity from the Neolithic to Early Medieval Times in Switzerland

“…Ancient DNA studies have traditionally paid much attention to the process of domestication and the early spread of, e.g., cattle, [5,[14][15][16]. However, in recent years, the focus has increasingly been turning to the cultural impact of cattle during later time periods across Europe and the Near East, for example, from Iberia, Austria, the Baltic region, Sweden, Hungary, Lithuania, Switzerland, Scotland and the Eastern Mediterranean region [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”