Fig. 3.

Integrated diagram of the inferred demographic history of the late-Holocene human and sheep populations on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). (A) Distribution and approximate dates of prehistoric archeological sites of sheep in the QTP and surrounding areas. The thick brown line indicates the Tang–Bo Ancient Road (Chen et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2017). (B) A proposed demographic scenario for the development of agriculture on the QTP based on archeological records of domestic animals (e.g., sheep, cattle, pig, and dog) and crops (e.g., millet, barley, and wheat) (supplementary table S2, Supplementary Material online), with sheep and wheat as representative species shown on the figure. (C) A proposed demographic scenario of sheep on the QTP based on genetic data in this study. (D) The best-supported demographic model of Chinese sheep populations inferred from the approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) approach.