title: Early history of European domestic cattle as revealed by ancient DNA.
abstract: We present an extensive ancient DNA analysis of mainly Neolithic cattle bones sampled from archaeological sites along the route of Neolithic expansion, from Turkey to North-Central Europe and Britain. We place this first reasonable population sample of Neolithic cattle mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in context to illustrate the continuity of haplotype variation patterns from the first European domestic cattle to the present. Interestingly, the dominant Central European pattern, a starburst phylogeny around the modal sequence, T3, has a Neolithic origin, and the reduced diversity within this cluster in the ancient samples accords with their shorter history of post-domestic accumulation of mutation.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Anthropologie, Molecular Archaeology Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Saarstrasse 21, 55099 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bollongino
authors.forename: C J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.forename: K W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Alt
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Burger
authors.forename: D G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Bradley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic / Q000235:genetics*; D001106:Archaeology; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000737:chemistry; D002417:Cattle / Q000235:genetics*; D004252:DNA Mutational Analysis; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000032:analysis; D005060:Europe; D005828:Genetics, Population; D009154:Mutation
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial