Origins of caprine herding.

Abstract

The PNAS article by Stiner et al. (1), “A forager–herder trade-off, from broad-spectrum hunting to sheep management at Asikli Hoyuk, Turkey,” adds a major new element to our evidence for—and understanding of—the appearance of the first animal herding in southwest Asia, involving the earliest management of caprines (managed caprines including sheep and goat), as well as an important methodological good-practice case study of ways to identify and understand this phenomenon. Two caprine species, sheep and goat, seem to have been the world’s earliest herded animals (a third caprine species in this region, ibex, does not seem to have been herded), although the dog was domesticated many millennia earlier.