Piedmontese cattle, Aurochs Zebu cross

[librarian]

Could some scholarly person point me to dna work that either supports or refutes this legend?
And who was Dr. Maletto?

The Piedmontese Cattle
http://inquisitiveeater.com/2012/03/20/la-granda-how-a-farmers-cooperative-changed-the-destiny-of-a-cow/#_ftnref

The Piedmontese cattle, as the name suggests, originated in Piedmont. There are many theories surrounding its origins but perhaps the most compelling is that by Professor Maletto. Through evidence obtained from cave writings and fossil remains, he concluded that this breed is a descendent of the ancient cow, Aurochs, and the Pakistan cow, Zebu. According to his theory, the Zebu breed immigrated to Piedmont in the 1600s and, trapped by the Alps Mountains and rivers, settled in the same area of the Aurochs.

This breed immediately caught the attention of farmers and Italian agricultural institutions due to its groppa doppia or double-muscle characteristic. However, not everyone was in favour of its diffusion since some perceived this characteristic as a weakness. In fact, according to Dr. Sergio Capaldo, around 100 years ago, farmers used to kill this kind of cow as soon as it was born, as they thought it had a defect. Consequently, in the beginning, this breed was only used by farmers to help them in their work.”

 

[knabe]

I would ignore it unless Jared decker said otherwise.  i can't interpret the relatedness chart to find the link to zebu

apparently, the white coat with black skin came from zebu which also shows up in chi and marchchianga, there are probably a couple of others.

i have heard some cattle came from africa by the romans as well.

not sure what the dna story says.

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004254

https://cafnr.missouri.edu/2014/03/fertile-crescent-ancestors/

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5685-7343

etc

 

[librarian]

Thank you, those are very useful links. From the first one, "African taurine genetic background is commonly observed among European Mediterranean breeds. The absence of indicine introgression within most European taurine breeds, but presence within three Italian breeds is consistent with at least two separate migration waves of cattle to Europe, one from the Middle East which captured taurines in which indicine introgression had already occurred and the second from western Africa into Spain with no indicine introgression. This second group seems to have radiated from Spain into the Mediterranean resulting in a cline of African taurine introgression into European taurines."