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Caprine forest 20084/6/2023 ![]() ![]() They differ in the conditions of selection but nonetheless describe a continuum between free-ranging populations that colonize and adapt in specific ways to human-altered environments (commensal pathway) and highly orchestrated manipulation by humans of survivorship and mate choice within a controlled environment (directed pathway). Three common pathways to animal domestication are widely recognized-the commensalism pathway, the prey pathway, and the directed pathway ( 2, 4). ![]() Most of this contextual information is provided by archaeological science. These contextual data concern the physical and social aspects of the human-altered environment to which the partner species adapts and the human behaviors that repeatedly biased survivorship in the partner population. Reliable contextual data about the timing and nature of the early phases of animal management are harder to come by, yet they are utterly essential to understanding early domestication processes. We know far less about the formative conditions of domestication because the physical traits commonly studied only diverge from wild progenitors after many generations. Most of what we know about animal domestication pertains to the later outcomes of the process. Accumulating evidence has revealed that, as with many plants, domestication of hoofed animal species occurred in multiple loci and over longer periods than previously recognized. Many of the domesticated ungulates that we know today evolved within the Neolithic period between about 10,000 and 5,000 y ago. Aşıklı was an independent center of caprine domestication and thus supports the multiple origins evolutionary model.Īnimal domestication is a coevolutionary mutualism that, in rare cases and with sufficient time, may develop between humans and another species ( 1– 3). The transitions were gradual but, with time, gave rise to early domesticated forms and monumental differences in human labor organization, settlement layout, and waste accumulation. Wild infant capture likely continued at a low level. The third mode shows the hallmarks of a large-scale herding economy based on a large, reproductively viable captive population but oddly directed to harvesting adult animals, contra to most later Neolithic practices. The second mode paired modest levels of caprine reproduction on site with continued recruitment of wild infants. This was essentially a “catch-and-grow” strategy that involved seasonal capture of wild lambs and kids from the surrounding highlands and raising them several months prior to slaughter within the settlement. The earliest mode was embedded within a broad-spectrum foraging economy and directed to live meat storage on a small scale. ![]() Caprine management at Aşıklı segued through three viable systems. Our comparative analysis of caprine age and sex structures and related evidence reveals a local domestication process that began around 8400 cal BC. This study investigates the initial conditions and trajectory of caprine domestication at Aşıklı Höyük, which preserves an unusually high-resolution record of the first 1,000 y of Neolithic existence in Central Anatolia. Sheep and goats (caprines) were domesticated in Southwest Asia in the early Holocene, but how and in how many places remain open questions. ![]()
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