Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the approach that Savolainen had earlier used in his dog study to locate the
most likely site of dog domestication. They scanned yak populations from
all around the Tibetan Plateau and found that the most diverse populations
were on the border of northeast Tibet and China's Qinghai Province, 1,500
kilometers south of the Gorkhi Valley. This area, they concluded, was the
most likely site of yak domestication.
The domestication of yaks seems to have been much less complicated
than the domestication of dogs. Both the genetic and the archeological evi-
dence point to a single domestication event that happened approximately
10,000 years ago. At around that time the grip of the most recent Ice Age had
begun to ease. As glaciers started to retreat, the higher valleys of the great
Tibetan plateau emerged from their long deep freeze. The tough nomad
tribes who ventured into the mountains to explore these new areas encoun-
tered yaks already thriving there. Unsung geniuses among them realized the
potential of yaks for milk and meat, and found ways to confi ne and herd the
animals.
Dogs must certainly have played a role in the domestication of these
valuable yak herds. They helped to track down lost animals and they pro-
tected the herds from wolves and, in the more forested regions, Siberian and
Caspian tigers.
Much later, domestic cattle from India and the Middle East were intro-
duced into the area, where they hybridized with the yaks. It soon became
clear that these hybrid animals could do well at altitudes where both yaks
and cattle felt uncomfortable.
The most genetically diverse domestic cattle breeds currently live in the
Middle East and northwest India, marking their probable points of origin.
Domestic cattle had a more complex origin than domestic yaks, one that was
bound up with religious beliefs as well as mere utility.
The Middle East of 10,000 years ago was a transition zone between dense
European forests to the north and west and an African-like savanna to the
south. Because these ecosystems were both still largely intact, the zone pro-
vided a dramatic collision between these two biological worlds, even more
dramatic than the ecological collision zone that we saw in Chapter 2 when
we visited the present-day Evolution Canyon of northern Israel.
