A history of donkeys, wild asses and mules in Africa

While it is probably poor practice to award regions of the world marks for originating domesticates it is worth noting that Africa is responsible for four species of domestic animal in common use today, the donkey, the cat, the guinea-fowl and (probably) cattle. Of these, only cattle have attracted substantial attention from archaeozoologists, although the Near East lens through which much of their work is viewed has probably acted to obscure as much as to illuminate. To fill at least one of these lacunae, this paper focuses on reconstructing the history of the domestication of the donkey. ¹