New Study Combines Genetics and Archaeology to Look at the Origins of the Domestic Camel
To conduct their research, the team compared the genetic information from more than 1,000 camels from today with that of early wild and domesticated camels from Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Austria, and south-eastern Arabia (where Magee has led excavations).
The findings support Magee and others archeological research suggesting that south-eastern Arabia, now the UAE and Oman, was likely where the dromedary was first domesticated.
For over 20 years Magee has excavated the sites of Tell Abraq and Muweilah in the UAE. The Muweilah excavations have revealed almost 10 times as many bones of domesticated dromedaries as at any other single contemporary site in the Middle East.
“The archaeological research pointed to the region as a potential source of domestication. The genetic work, from a completely different angle, is pointing in the same direction," Magee told The National.
In addition to answering questions about the origins of today’s domesticated camels, the researchers found that the back-and-forth movement of camel caravans throughout history brought different dromedary populations in contact with each other leading to a regular gene flow and the maintenance of greater genetic diversity than typically found in domesticated animals.
Magee’s most recent book is The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. He is currently editing his next book, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Arabia.
For more on Magee, see this article from February, 2015.