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Donkeys transformed human history as essential beasts of burden for long-distance movement, especially across semi-arid and upland environments. They remain insufficiently studied despite globally expanding and providing key support to low- to middle-income communities. To elucidate their domestication history, we constructed a comprehensive genome panel of 207 modern and 31 ancient donkeys, as well as 15 wild equids. We found a strong phylogeographic structure in modern donkeys that supports a single domestication in Africa ~5000 BCE, followed by further expansions in this continent and Eurasia and ultimately returning to Africa. We uncover a previously unknown genetic lineage in the Levant ~200 BCE, which contributed increasing ancestry toward Asia. Donkey management involved inbreeding and the production of giant bloodlines at a time when mules were essential to the Roman economy and military.

In 2007 two stelae, each bearing figures of the Storm-god leading a ruler and a duplicate Hieroglyphic Luwian text, were discovered at Uluçınar (formerly Arsuz), on the Turkish coast south of Iskenderun. The inscription is the work of a Suppiluliuma, son of Manana, king of the land of Walastin, now understood as the Luwian designation of the Amuq plain with its capital at the Iron Age site of Tell Tayinat. The stelae, probably dating to the later tenth century BC, record the successful reign of the ruler and his happy relations with the Storm-god. Historically important is a passage which describes this Amuq king's victory over the Cilician plain, the city of Adana and the land of Hiyawa.