AFRICAN farmers domesticated their own cows some 9000 years ago, rather than importing them as had been supposed. The cows 鈥渁re a progeny of Africa and quite distinct from later cattle invaders,鈥� says Olivier Hanotte of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. 鈥淭his shows that African pastoral societies are at least as old as those in the Middle East.鈥�
Hanotte鈥檚 genetic analysis of African cattle shows that native cows were bred from African races of now-extinct wild oxen. Some pure African cattle remain in West Africa, but most have been interbred with Asian and European animals over the past 2000 years (Science, vol 296, p 336).