Abstract
The faunal assemblage from the 9th-8th millennium BP site at Sha'ar Hagolan, Israel, is used to study human interaction with wild suids and cattle in a time period just before the appearance of domesticated animals of these species in the Jordan Valley. Our results, based on demographic and osteometric data, indicate that full domestication of both cattle and suids occurred at the site during the 8th millennium. Importantly, domestication was preceded in both taxa by demographic and metric population parameters indicating severe overhunting. The possible role of overhunting in shaping the characteristics of domesticated animals and the social infrastructure to ownership of herds is then explored.
Highlights
Understanding of the role of humans as constant modifiers of their ecological niches is reshaping at present our understanding on the beginning of agriculture [1]
Its onset can be found in sheep, goat, cattle and pigs at certain parts of the Near East from the 12th millennium BP onwards
Survival to later adulthood appears to have been a rare occurrence in PPN populations. This is apparently not the result of a conservative herding strategy for either cattle or pigs, if we take into account the female-dominated sex ratio, since it means very early culling of the reproductive core of the herd [31]
Summary
Understanding of the role of humans as constant modifiers of their ecological niches is reshaping at present our understanding on the beginning of agriculture [1]. The effects of the demographic pulse following the rise of food-producing, settled communities in the 11th-10th millennia BP [2,3] has seen an exponential growth in the area occupied by human-constructed, homogenized agricultural landscapes We perceive this expansion as axial to the evolving interaction at that time between humans, wild cattle and wild boar that eventually led to the domestication of these species. The emphasis here is on viewing domestication as an unfolding process—evolution, rather than sudden event In this respect we part with older approaches seeking clear cut-off points between domesticated livestock species and their wild progenitors in the region, approaches which are being replaced by more nuanced documentation of the selective pressures introduced in the process of domestication [4]. The recent discoveries of morphologically-wild populations of goats, cattle, suids and even fallow deer in 11th millennium BP Cyprus, brought there by Neolithic colonists, is a striking demonstration of such human involvement [8]
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