Donkeys were first domesticated from wild asses around 7,000 years ago in East Africa, perhaps helping humans adapt to more arid conditions (Credit: Eric Lafforgue/Getty Images)
In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, donkeys were considered important enough to be buried with humans, in some cases, even with kings or rulers, according to Laerke Recht at the University of Graz in Austria. She says that donkeys made a huge difference in humanity's ability to transport goods over long distances by land due to the animals' endurance and ability to carry heavy burdens.
"While rivers such as the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt could be used for transport of heavy and/or bulk goods, donkeys meant a massive increase and intensification of contacts over land," she says.
"While rivers such as the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt could be used for transport of heavy and/or bulk goods, donkeys meant a massive increase and intensification of contacts over land," she says.
Recht says this coincided with the increasing use of bronze during in the third millennium BC. "Donkeys could carry the heavy copper over long distances and into areas where it could not be found naturally (or only in very small amounts), including Mesopotamia."
"These were gigantic donkeys," says Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, at the Purpan Medical School in Toulouse, France. "These specimens, which were genetically linked to donkeys in Africa, were bigger than some of the horses."
Ludovic Orlando has been leading a project that sequenced the DNA from the donkey skeletons found at the site of a Roman villa in the village of Boinville-en-Woëvre. This was part of a larger study to trace the origin of domestication of donkeys and their subsequent spread to other parts of the world. The research is providing surprising insights into the history of our own species through our relationship with these versatile animals.
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