March 26, 2026: this page, first posted here in November 2025, is in the process of revision & updating.
Estoy rediseñando este sitio web en un proceso gradual mientras continuo mis estudios: hay mucho de investigación escrito de mano. Las páginas se publicarán en inglés, español y francés. Las entradas seguirán estando en inglés.
(Working title) “Early routes of the Andalusian donkey breed: a geographical enquiry.”
I have tentatively settled on this as a temporary working title. Why? I began last year at the earliest point: the domestication of donkeys in the Horn of Africa during a period of climate change for early pastoral communities. Then I began tracing the patterns of their introduction into early civilisations, long before they eventually traveled west on trade routes and arrived in the Iberian peninsula. I began to notice the intersection of all my questions about donkeys seemed to be linked to fundamebtally geographical explanations, just as the transition from pastoral life to agricultural life and the building of human settlements are all within the discipline of geography.
Having taught geography for the years before my retirement, I kept making more connections of this kind. One needs to be careful: for as the saying goes, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This is a multidisciplinary study: genetics, history, Islamic animal husbandry, and zooarcheology are not geography, but geo-graphy or “writing the earth” can be the
The fascinating – and doubtless complicated – question will be how the Andalusian breed was formed and from which early stocks, brought by which peoples… Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, etc. It is clear there was possibly a double domestication of donkeys in the north of Africa and the Levant/Mesopotamia from about 4500 to 2500 BCE. It is also the case that there were various imports of breeds into the Iberian peninsula, from Africa and then also across the Pyrenees with various migrations, trading and invasions.
I have often heard the Andalusian donkey breed characterised as a 3,000 year old direct line, but why “3000 years”? I have not seen evidence for this calculation – even if I am in no position to dispute it either – but I believe it would be worthwhile testing the basis for this idea. Comparisons with histories of other breeds could be useful, such as the Zamorano-Leonesa, similar to the baudet du Poitou in France and connected to the Romans; alsoother large breeds such as the Catalan donkey. My main focus remains on tracing the specific Andalusian donkey connections, back to the earliest generic domestication roots in the Horn of Africa, via trade routes, different types of husbandry evidence (Roman, Iberian, Islamic, etc.), agriculture and transport developments, and evidence of morphological change recorded in art (allowing for stylistic variation: i.e. degrees of realism.)
The study could benefit from tracing donkey DNA evidence geographically, if that is possible (linked to zooarchaeology), and in this endeavour the pattern would be the “out of Africa” DNA studies showing the spread of humans worldwide. (That work is still partly disputed but nevertheless an inspiring ambitious model.)
Early literature may also be a source: e.g. there are many references to donkeys in cuneiform trading accounts in Mesopotamia in which there are copious references to donkeys, who were a key driver of the local and international economy.
As this study continues, I invite readers to share their comments, corrections, questions and additional sources that may help the progress of this journey, for example there have been important archaeological finds recently, such as Roman donkeys (mule production) in north-eastern France and the oldest mule in Europe was found in the Penedés in north-eastern Spain (suggested in December 2025 to be 2,800 years old), and I would like to know about other finds that may have escaped my notice and may be useful to developing this project.
Comments may be made in the language of the page, or in any language. (Commenting is not enabled on the Reference pages or the bibliography page.