"Scholars had previously identified three potential centers of domestication, in the Near East, northeast Africa (including Egypt) and the Arabian Peninsula. But Dr. Orlando’s team concluded that donkeys — humanity’s first land-based transport — were domesticated only once, around 5,000 B.C., when herders in the Horn of Africa and present-day Kenya began to tame wild asses."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/science/donkeys-genetics-archaeology.html