Credited to United Arab Emirates. The evidence points to the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula, which includes present-day Oman as well as the UAE, and not to the UAE alone. The authors of the 2016 PNAS study note that wild camel distribution is poorly known and that other regions have been less studied. The wild bones tested came from Emirati sites.
How it began
A 2016 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Faisal Almathen, Pamela Burger and colleagues combined ancient and modern DNA to trace where the dromedary was domesticated. It placed the event on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the late second or early first millennium BCE. The wild dromedary bones it tested came from Al-Sufouh, Tell Abraq, Umm an-Nar and Al-Buhais, all in the present-day United Arab Emirates. The authors found that wild camels from this coast contributed to the domestic gene pool.
Before it existed
Wild dromedaries were hunted in southeast Arabia. Sites without buildings, such as Al-Sufouh, hold large concentrations of their bones. Faunal remains from 5000 to 500 BCE elsewhere in Arabia, such as coastal Yemen, have not yielded wild dromedaries, which suggests that by the time of domestication the wild animal may have lived only along the southeast coast.
How it works
Several lines of evidence mark the change from hunted to herded animals. Bone measurements show a significant decrease in size in remains from about 1100 to 800 BCE. Camel bones become more common in the refuse of settlements. Figurines and images show camels that are clearly domestic. The DNA indicates that at least two, and more likely six or more, wild maternal lineages were taken into herds, with later restocking from the wild.
How it spread
Domestic dromedaries made it possible to move people and valuable goods such as salt, incense and spices over long desert distances, linking Arabia with the Near East and North Africa. The study found that back-and-forth movement along caravan routes mixed camel populations across regions, leaving shared genetic diversity everywhere except East Africa. Early domestic specimens in the study came from Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Austria.
What lasted
The wild dromedary is thought not to have survived past the start of the Common Era, less than two thousand years after the domestic form appeared. The study describes dromedaries as fundamental to human societies in arid lands and to long-distance trade for 3,000 years, and they remain an important livestock animal.
