Earliest expansion of animal husbandry beyond the Mediterranean zone in the sixth millennium BC

Jonathan Ethier,Krum Bacvarov,Maria Ivanova,Mélanie Roffet-Salque,Richard P Evershed,Eszter Bánffy,Krassimir Leshtakov,Jasna Vuković

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-07427-x

Abstract

Since their domestication in the Mediterranean zone of Southwest Asia in the eighth millennium BC, sheep, goats, pigs and cattle have been remarkably successful in colonizing a broad variety of environments. The initial steps in this process can be traced back to the dispersal of farming groups into the interior of the Balkans in the early sixth millennium BC, who were the first to introduce Mediterranean livestock beyond its natural climatic range. Here, we combine analysis of biomolecular and isotopic compositions of lipids preserved in prehistoric pottery with faunal analyses of taxonomic composition from the earliest farming sites in southeast Europe to reconstruct this pivotal event in the early history of animal husbandry. We observe a marked divergence between the (sub)Mediterranean and temperate regions of Southeast Europe, and in particular a significant increase of dairying in the biochemical record coupled with a shift to cattle and wild fauna at most sites north of the Balkan mountain range. The findings strongly suggest that dairying was crucial for the expansion of the earliest farming system beyond its native bioclimatic zone.

Highlights

The wild progenitors of the main domestic animals in the Old World are endemic to regions with Mediterranean climate and are adapted to withstand prolonged hot summer droughts and mild but wet winters[1, 2]
Since early farmers kept domestic animals primarily for food and were dependent on them for survival, we can assume that their use of animal foodstuffs was finely adjusted to the animals’ productivity under different ecological conditions
Faunal remains are widely used in archaeology as a proxy for past interactions between people and animals[15,16,17]

Summary

Introduction

The wild progenitors of the main domestic animals in the Old World are endemic to regions with Mediterranean climate and are adapted to withstand prolonged hot summer droughts and mild but wet winters[1, 2]. Farmers have brought sheep, goats, pigs and cattle to an enormous variety of environments, from semi-deserts to sub-arctic regions. Their present-day distribution, pushed out to the boundaries of the world inhabitable by humans, was mediated through human protection and breeding of animals that thrive under conditions often not tolerated by their wild ancestors. The adaptation of herding economy to new bioclimatic conditions has been recognised as a major component of this phenomenon[8,9,10,11,12,13,14], the human strategies which promoted it have remained uncertain.

Methods

Results

Conclusion