The Domestic Goat (Capra hircus or C. aegagrus hirca) was derived from the (C. aegagrus). At the beginning of this century, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization compiled a summary of domestic breeds of mammals and identified nearly 600 Domestic Goat breeds. The Wild Goat was likely domesticated around 10,000-11,000 years ago mainly in eastern (in modern day Turkey) and secondarily in the and Southern . Large-scale studies of mitochondrial DNA have indicated that all haplotypes now found in domestic goats are present in Wild Goats and more than 90% of domestic goats share the same haplotype (a haplotype that is common today in Wild Goats in the eastern Anatolia region of Turkey). Today there are an estimated 700 million domestic goats, perhaps 20% of them on the Indian subcontinent.
(Groves and Leslie 2011 and references therein)
Rights Holder: Leo Shapiro
