Sequencing of goat from Neolithic Ganj Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein, ~ 10,000BP.. Neolithic Zagros Goat

The Aceramic Neolithic (~9,600-7,000 cal BC) period in the Zagros Mountains, western Iran, provides some of the earliest evidence of goat (Capra hircus) management and husbandry practices by humans. However, little is known about how these goat relate to or are differentiated from domestic and wild populations. We combine published data with 15 novel nuclear genomes (mean coverage 1.13X) and 25 mitochondrial genomes (mean coverage 143X) from two Zagros highland Aceramic Neolithic sites, Ganj Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein, and also expand on previous zooarchaeological analyses. Goats from these sites are basal to all other domestic goats and form two distinct clusters: a domestic-like group and a smaller wild-like group, indicating that managed goats were genetically distinct from wild goat by c. 8,000 cal BC. This genetic distinction, the presence of large ROH, shared ancestry with later Neolithic populations, a sex bias in zooarchaeological remains, and demographic profiles from across all layers of Ganj Dareh support management of genetically-domestic goat present at the two sites c. 8,200-7,600 cal BC, and represent the oldest reported domesticate genomes. Autosomal and mtDNA diversity of the domestic group are high relative to later Neolithic populations and this, with the absence of reported selection signatures for pigmentation and wild morphology of bone remains, illustrates domestication as an ongoing process. Within this process our findings suggest a vector leading from spatial control, to demographic manipulation, and finally phenotypic and genomic selection. Ganj Dareh collection Smithsonian NMNH Accession number: 1125905; sample catalog number: A587262.