The Emergence of Animal Management in the Southern Levant

Natalie D. Munro,Reuven Yeshurun,Guy Bar-Oz,Lidar Sapir-Hen,Mary C. Stiner,Jacqueline S. Meier

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27647-z

Abstract

Our compilation of zooarchaeological data from a series of important archaeological sites spanning the Epipaleolithic through Pre-Pottery Neolithic B periods in the Mediterranean Hills of the southern Levant contributes to major debates about the beginnings of ungulate management in Southwest Asia. The data support an onset of ungulate management practices by the Early PPNB (10,500–10,000 cal. BP), more than 500 years earlier than previously thought for this region. There is a clear developmental connection between reduced hunting intensity and the uptake of ungulate management, confirming that this process began in response to local, density-dependent demographic factors. The early process of goat domestication in the southern Levant appears to have been overwhelmingly local. This may have been true for cattle and pigs as well. Nevertheless, the loose synchrony of animal management trends across Southwest Asia was undoubtedly enabled by large-scale social networks that transmitted knowledge. The results add to growing evidence that animal management processes followed multiple regional evolutionary pathways within the Fertile Crescent.

Highlights

Because domestication is a process that brings about changes at the level of populations, it may be impossible to pin it to a single location of origin[6,7]
The trend in small game abundance reverses in the EPPNB and further in the MPPNB (E&MPPNB index significantly smaller than NAT&PPNA index; t = 1.86; df = 8; p = 0.005)
The results clearly show that wild ungulate taxa of the Natufian and PPNA diet were replaced in the EPPNB with the same large-bodied species that came under domestication

Summary

Introduction

Because domestication is a process that brings about changes at the level of populations, it may be impossible to pin it to a single location of origin[6,7]. Like others[7,8,9], we view the process of domestication as a continuum characterized by intensifying human-animal interactions. These range from controlling the movements of wild animals to selective culling, and the selective breeding of animals in a captive environment. In the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Hills of the southern Levant, changes in the relative frequency, demographic profiles, stable isotope ratios, and body-sizes of goats have long hinted at an autochthonous process of goat management, albeit at a somewhat later date than elsewhere in Southwest Asia Either hypothesis might be correct, but we argue that a mix of these phenomena is far more likely

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion