Domestication
The slow process by which wild aurochs became herd animals living with people, beginning more than 10,000 years ago.
Also: taming of cattle, cattle domestication
Cattle were domesticated at least twice. Archaeology and ancient DNA point to the upper Euphrates and Tigris, in present-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq, around 10,500 years ago for taurine cattle, and to the Indus region, with early evidence at Mehrgarh in Balochistan, around 8,000 years ago for zebu. The founding herds were small, and early domestic cattle were smaller than their wild ancestors. Over thousands of years farmers moved their cattle across Europe, Africa and Asia, and herds mixed with local wild aurochs on the way. Domestic relatives were tamed separately: the yak on the Tibetan Plateau, the gayal from the gaur, and Bali cattle from the banteng.