Evidence for Domestication of Donkey Found in Egypt

I find articles about equines very interesting, because of the association of the horse with the game of chess. The knight piece of today's chess still reflects this close association, while the rook, which was known as a tower in some countries and a joker (fool), leaper and boat in others, was in pre-Islamic times a chariot - in Pahlavi, the language spoken in the ancient Persian empire at the time before the Islamic conquest - "ruhkh." As I understand the current state of research, horses were first domesticated in about 4000 BCE on the steppes of Eurasia for the nomadic peoples of the area. There were no horses in the Middle East at the time, though. The great civilizations of Sumer and Eqypt knew only the onager or wild ass. I believe horses were not introduced into the Middle East until perhaps 2000 BCE; and began to be bred seriously as war animals only with the advent of the spoked wheel chariot which was introduced into the Middle East sometime after its invention in Armenia circa 1800 BCE. Here is the article about evidence for domestication of the donkey from The Telegraph (Calcutta): Donkey didn’t have dog’s life- Signs of earliest domestication & high rank G.S. MUDUR New Delhi, March 10: Donkey skeletons from a burial place of ancient Egyptian rulers have yielded the first hard evidence for the earliest domestication of donkeys about 5,000 years ago. The remains, found in brick-lined graves, show signs of spondylosis and vertebral disc degeneration caused by the strain of turning into beasts of burden, an international research team said. The donkeys from Abydos, about 480km south of Cairo, provide the earliest direct evidence of the use of donkeys for transport rather than for meat, Fiona Marshall at the Washington University St. Louis and her colleagues said in a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The animals resembled wild asses, but displayed joint wear typically associated with the microscopic fractures that arise in the vertebral bones after overloading and strain. “Genetic research has suggest African origins for the donkey,” said Marshall, an archaeologist trying to decipher the origin and spread of pastoralism in Africa. But an exact time and place for domestication has been hard to pinpoint because signs of early domestication can be hard to see, she said. Archaeologists believe the domestication of the donkey was a key event in the history of human civilisation. Donkeys are tough and capable of carrying heavy loads in arid regions. Their domestication could have allowed the distribution of food across ancient Egypt and facilitated trade with other cultures in Africa and western Asia, according to the researchers. Marshall and her co-workers from Denmark and Germany examined 10 donkey skeletons from three graves in the mortuary complex of one of the founder dynasties of Egyptian kings. The positions of the donkeys’ graves suggest that the beasts of burden were accorded the same importance as court officials. “This was a great surprise,” Marshall said. “The donkeys occupied special tombs in which you would normally find the highest courtiers of ancient Egypt,” Marshall said. “This suggests that they were greatly valued by the pharaoh. It’s possible they were used to carry something very important,” she said. None of the seal impressions contained a royal name for the identity of the king for whom the burial complex was built. But the iconography of the seals and the configuration of the architecture suggest a date close to the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, about 3000 BC, the researchers said in their report. The donkeys were between 8 and 13 years of age — in their prime adulthood. The joints of all the animals showed heavy wear. Joint wear on the feet suggested that the damage had resulted from loading rather than from pulling, the researchers said.