by Brian Fagan
We may never know, for there are limits to what fragmentary pig bones can tell us. Some tantalizing clues come from the other side of the world, from traditional pig management practices in highland and lowland New Guinea, where pig husbandry has been a central part of subsistence economies for many centuries.3 The New Guineans manage pig reproduction in a variety of ways, but captive pigs are often the progeny of wild boars and domestic sows, with the surplus males being castrated. Breeding tame sows with wild boars would have been easier in earlier times than it is today, when agriculture was less intensified and more forested land was close at hand. Crossing domesticated boars and sows with no contact with the wild would have required much higher human population densities, many more pigs in village herds, and regular exchanges of animals from one community to another. Such transactions would have been laden with social consequences in societies where individually owned animals were a novelty.
Full domestication involving the exclusive breeding of domestic herds may have taken many generations to achieve, especially when people and pigs competed, as they did, for cereal crops that were the staple of farming communities throughout Southwest Asia. This may be why pigs—which were, after all, prized mainly for their meat and for their social value—came fully into their own only after goats and sheep had become the farm animals of choice from Turkey to Egypt and beyond.4
Mouflon and Bezoar
The hunters walk openly across the grassy clearing in the morning sun, wrapped up well against the chill. Deep shadows give way to bright sunlight where the mouflon flock grazes peacefully, the red brown of their coats glowing softly in the still-tentative warmth. A ram with magnificent, curling horns looks up uninterestedly at the familiar visitors, who pass close to the nearest ewes. One of the females moves slowly up to the men and almost nudges a young man armed with a bow and arrow. He reaches down to pet her head, but she moves away, lingering a few meters off, totally unafraid. The flock moves closer, still grazing as the hunters walk slowly away. No one in the group remarks on the close encounter, for they see it virtually every time they approach the sheep in clear view. There’s an easy familiarity between mouflon and human.
Neither wild goats nor sheep are dangerous or frightening prey; nor, as far as we know, did they inspire mythic tales of danger and fierce attacks in the past. As with other ungulates, their defense was to flee, and then only when they perceived an imminent threat. Those who hunted them had observed their prey for generations and knew well that walking unthreateningly in the open rarely alarmed the flocks.
Today’s goats and sheep retain qualities that may have been more marked ten millennia ago. John Mionczynski is a modern-day expert on goat packing. He takes his beasts far into the backcountry of the western United States—they are strong, hardworking, and disciplined animals.5 Above all, he says, they are friendly and very adaptable, comfortable in cold landscapes and in semiarid terrain. Goats are inquisitive creatures, so much so that Mionczynski and many others have experienced wild goats and sheep walking right up to them in remote places. Like humans, caprines are gregarious and intensely curious. They are more intelligent than many people believe and also recognize both other beasts and individual people after repeated encounters. These qualities could have enhanced close contacts between wild goats, sheep, and humans at a time of drought and enhanced propinquity across desiccated landscapes. A form of easy coexistence could have developed that led, almost inevitably, to domestication. No one knows why people turned to sheep and goats, but like Hallan Çemi’s pigs, they may have created flocks and herds as a form of what we would call risk management against food shortages.
The ancestors of today’s goats and sheep still survive today in remote mountainous terrain, though it is decimated by centuries of intensive hunting. The West Asiatic mouflon, the wild sheep, was a native of a wide area of southwestern Asia, including Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains, even the Balkans, where it disappeared three thousand years ago.6 Mouflon are agile beasts, predominantly grazers, well adapted to steep terrain. In contrast, the stocky Persian wild goat, sometimes called the bezoar, is at home amid cliffs and rugged slopes, using its climbing ability to escape predators. Bezoar are browsers and grazers, capable of exploiting a wider range of foods than the mouflon. Both wild goats and sheep are nonterritorial, gregarious ungulates that spend most of their time in hierarchical groups. Rams compete strongly for ewes, with a dominant male acquiring a harem of several females, which are generally smaller.
Close observation and daily familiarity are givens in any scenario for domestication. But what actually happened? Here, alas, scientific data are hard to come by, which means that we have to rely on what we know about the behavior of modern animals and wild ancestors. In other words, we fall back on intelligent speculation. We can be certain that there must have been numerous occasions when hunters would capture a young mouflon, perhaps several of them. What would be more logical than to corral them separately from their original flock as a convenient way of having food close at hand? We can be certain, too, that sometimes the corralling worked, but more frequently it probably did not.
We can develop the hypothetical scenario further. As generations unfolded, so wild goats and sheep lived out their lives within easy hunting range in landscapes where sparse water supplies nourished animals and people alike. Inevitably, the number of captures gradually increased. Corralling young beasts became a familiar routine in what one can only describe as a form of “predomestication.” The imprisoned beasts were still technically wild, but now formed herds or flocks that spent most of their time close to human settlements, perhaps in simple enclosures that protected them from predators at night.
An imaginary situation, one admits, but the only one that fits what we know about goat and sheep behavior. This was something very different from the domestication of dogs, which was a much more social process. Here, in the final analysis, the primary interest on the human side must have been access to a reliable meat supply in a time of major climatic change, when both game populations and wild plant foods became much harder to find during prolonged droughts. Previously, hunting groups throughout Southwest Asia had harvested hundreds of gazelle during their spring and fall migrations to new pastures. People still relied heavily on gazelle, but goats and sheep were about to assume a central role in local life.
What about Gazelle?
Why didn’t the farmers just domesticate the ubiquitous gazelle? Gazelle (Gazella sp.) are some of the fastest-moving antelope on earth.7 They are small animals, usually live in herds, and thrive on coarse semiarid vegetation. From the ancient hunter’s perspective, they had one priceless and relatively predictable characteristic: They migrated in enormous numbers northward in late spring and early summer, when in prime condition, and then returned south in the fall. For thousands of years, hunters, then farmers, harvested migrating gazelle in mass kills that provided meat for the rest of the year.
A large enclosure of close-set wooden poles lies near a small stream. Gaps in the fence open into deep pits just outside. Every year, the hunters wait for migrating gazelle, which arrive in a packed mass to drink on their way to summer pastures where the young are born. The hunters watch for the telltale dust clouds raised by the approaching herd. The hunters, spaced out with their weapons, shout and wave their clubs and bows, while women stand and flap skin cloaks. Dogs bark at the terrified herd. The frightened antelope stampede into the enclosed space. They try to leap over the fence, crowd for the entrances, where they fall into the waiting holes, breaking their legs and struggling in agony. The hunters move in with clubs and spears, killing dozens of beasts. Meanwhile, others shoot razor-sharp arrows into the teeming herds inside the palisade. The butchery starts immediately. Animal after animal is skinned, then expertly dismembered, the flesh cut into strips and dried for use year-round.
For all the sustained contact with gazelles, corralling them was nearly impossible, as they were jumpers. They also had a profound fear of all predators, i
ncluding humans. We can be certain, however, that the hunters captured young fawns. None other than the famed African explorer Sir Richard Burton observed of the Bedouin that they “so succeed in taming the young things that they will follow their owner like dogs, and amuse themselves by hopping on his shoulders.”8 Such casual pet keeping was very different from maintaining significant numbers of adult animals in captivity and breeding them, which was much easier with goats and sheep.
Sheep, Goats, and Survivor Curves
The deliberate corralling of young goats and sheep must have occurred in many places. We can only imagine what happened. At first the captures may have been casual, perhaps like those of young gazelle. But in the case of the bezoar and mouflon, cherishing a few newborns or abandoned young ones gradually turned into something quite different, once it became clear that these relatively docile and quite intelligent beasts flourished in captivity. Now the hunters separated young beasts from flocks and herds, selecting them carefully for their docility and daily behavior. Capturing such beasts would have been relatively simple, given the ease with which humans and wild caprines interacted on a regular basis.
Once the animals were penned, the ingredients of a founder herd were in place, probably within a relatively short time. Its members lived under very different conditions than those of the wild. Now the physical contact with humans was constant and intimate, the incentives for trust and mutual understanding greatly enhanced. Their new masters and mistresses controlled the animals’ every movement in situations where their charges were already accustomed to hierarchy and leadership in the wild. The animals enjoyed immediate benefits: greater protection from predators, shelter from cold and heat when needed, and much better access to grazing grounds and very different foods. There were now immediate shifts in selection pressures from those in the wild.
Generations of researchers have excavated farming villages and early towns from Turkey and across Southwest Asia to the Nile Valley, yet we still know frustratingly little about the changing relationship between animals and humans after domestication. A palimpsest of archaeological sites, fragmentary animal bones, and what zooarchaeologists call “survivorship curves” tells an incomplete story (see sidebar “Studying Survivorship Curves”). Such research attacks fundamental questions. What were the goals of herd management in the early millennia of goat and sheep domestication? Were animals kept for meat, which would have meant that most young surplus males were slaughtered when they reached an optimum weight? Alternatively, did the herders manage their animals for their wool or hair? Under these circumstances, male and female adults would have been culled, both being productive in management terms. But if the herders were after milk, most males would have been slaughtered at a very young age, to maximize the amount of milk available for human consumption. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to establish dairying practices from animal bones.
Studying Survivorship Curves
Can you tell a bison from a musk ox, an African eland from an impala, or—and this is where it gets really challenging—a wild goat or sheep from a domesticated one? Zooarchaeologists, the specialists who study animal bones from archaeological sites, find this hard enough with complete body parts. But when the people who butchered the animals in the first place literally cut the skeletons into ribbons for flesh, marrow, sinews, and so on, the task becomes even harder. Fortunately, distinctive body parts such as skulls, jaws, and the articular end of limb bones make most identifications relatively straightforward as far as wild animals and fully domesticated beasts are concerned. The shadowy transition period between, say, wild and domesticated sheep or pigs is especially challenging, owing to the often subtle changes between wild and tamed beasts. This is without taking into account sexual dimorphism (size variations between males and females) and other such factors. The most effective way of looking at the changes in human behavior toward animals during these millennia is to create survivorship curves, using large samples of upper and lower jaws, where the teeth supply information on the age of individual animals at the time when they were killed or slaughtered.
Teeth provide an almost continuous guide to the age of an individual animal from birth to old age. Immature teeth appear first, followed by mature ones, which erupt in sequence. For example, if a group of hunters drives a bison herd over a cliff, the result will be what zooarchaeologists call a “catastrophic age profile,” with few older individuals. An “attritional profile,” with overrepresentation of young and old beasts and few prime-age animals relative to their abundance in living populations, could result from spear hunting. Both these profiles are different from those found with a domesticated herd or flock, where the meat supply is controlled. Here you might find an abundance of prime animals with newly erupted mature teeth and fewer older animals. This reflects the reality of too many surplus males. Some may have been castrated, with most consumed for their meat and by-products; older females might have been killed when they were no longer of any use for breeding, milk, or (with males, too) draft purposes.
The situation becomes even more complicated at the threshold of domestication, when you might find a combination of selective hunting and systematic killing of surplus domesticated males. The only way one can figure out the meaning of such profiles is by working with large samples and assessing their meaning in the context of the excavated occupations as a whole. Survivorship research, carried out on goats, sheep, and pigs, is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, but shows great promise for the future.
Many variables act on survivorship curves, especially for subsistence herders, who rely heavily on their animal for food and raw materials, while at the same time being well aware of the risks that could decimate their herds. They tend, for example, to space out the slaughtering of rams as a hedge against food shortages. Herders have to respond to a wide range of environmental, political, and social realities, which can change dramatically within a short period. For instance, just the movement of herds from summer to winter pastures can skew curves obtained from a single site. Circumstances also change dramatically when the herders are engaged in the business of supplying meat and other products to larger urban populations, which was the case in later times.
We can track some of the changes, at least in general terms, from a series of Turkish sites that have yielded large numbers of goat and sheep bones.9 For instance, the inhabitants of Asikli Höyük, a large village in central Turkey occupied during the second half of the eighth millennium BCE, slaughtered caprines between the ages of one to three years. There are no signs of size decrease or other telltale indications of domestication. Perhaps the animals were not under intensive human management and still associated with wild breeding populations. At contemporary Süberde, the herders killed most animals between one and three years, most of these between twenty-one and twenty-four months. Süberde’s sheep are smaller than wild sheep beasts, probably living and breeding under human management. The earliest definitive evidence for a deliberate strategy of culling young adult male sheep, especially larger rams, comes from Erbaba Höyük, northwest of Süberde, occupied during the seventh millennium BCE.
By 6000 BCE, farmers over wide areas of Southwest Asia followed a strategy of herding goats and sheep for both meat and dairy products, often in landscapes outside the natural habitats of their larger wild ancestors. Surplus rams provided tender flesh, but goats survived longer, perhaps because of their much-valued hair.
Changing Beasts
Quite when the changes that distinguished domestic from wild goats and sheep began, we don’t know, but they were gradual and probably took hold around and after 9000 BCE, as flocks became larger.10 The danger of predators receded dramatically. The need for camouflage, so important in the wild, would have vanished in founder herds. Colors would have become more variable. The shape and size of the animals changed as agility and large body size became less important. Short-limbed, smaller beasts would have had a much better chance of surviving when domesticated. Horns, once valued as de
fense weapons against attackers and in competition for mates, became smaller, more varied, and sometimes were absent altogether. Goats and sheep in the wild had a heightened awareness of danger and were more aggressive toward one another during mating season or when defending territory than were domestic beasts. The latter no longer needed the familiar defense mechanisms of the wild.
Both goats and sheep had been seasonal feeders, moving to different locales in spring and fall. Now the pattern changed as their human masters preferred more open terrain, which had previously exposed the beasts to predators. Humans also restricted herd movement, which led to changes in limb size and proportions, such as a shortening of the extremities. Both animals became somewhat more sedentary and therefore more easily controlled. With a less mobile existence, the availability of food and water differed greatly from that in the wild. Richer, more stable environments may have resulted in less herd competition, and to automatic selection for accelerated sexual maturity, greater fertility, and increased fat storage. From the beginning the herders may have culled surplus males over and above those needed for breeding purposes. For one thing, rams were more aggressive and harder to control. The age and sex composition of herds changed dramatically, with major variations in reproduction patterns. Rams could now start reproducing much earlier, long before dominance competitions in the wild allowed. They became smaller; their horns changed and became reduced in size.
Tracking the subtle changes that transformed wild into domestic beasts is extremely difficult. We have only fragmentary bones to document herding practices. It’s an ineluctable fact of biological life that many more males are born in domesticated herds of all kinds than are needed for breeding purposes. This means that there are always fairly compelling reasons to cull surplus males before maturity, or to castrate them. However, other factors come into play. Was the herd merely a source of meat, or were its owners interested in milk or wool? Did the landscape provide sufficient winter feed to nourish both breeding stock and an excess of males? These were important questions when individual ownership and animal management were transforming farming and herding societies in profound ways.
