Domestication of the Camel

The dromedary, or one-humped camel, was domesticated on the Arabian Peninsula roughly 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, while the two-humped Bactrian camel was domesticated independently in Central Asia around a broadly similar period. Both species' extraordinary tolerance for heat, cold, dehydration and marginal forage made them foundational to arid and steppe pastoral economies and to the long-distance caravan trade across the Sahara, the Arabian deserts and the Silk Road, and camels remain important dairy, meat, wool and transport animals for pastoral communities across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia today.