[This is the fourth in a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, that saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists. For the start of the series, Part I, click here]

Dogs were the first animals domesticated by humans in the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. The first livestock animals to be domesticated were sheep, sometime between 11,000 and 9,000 BC, and goats. Their domestication was a significant milestone in the Neolithic, or First Agricultural, Revolution. It marked the start of humanity’s transition from wandering hunter gatherers to a lifestyle of settled animal husbandry and farming. Below are interesting facts about that event.

Taming Individual Animals vs Domestication of an Animal Species

Towards the close of the last ice age, Middle Eastern hunters in the mountains of modern Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, began to benefit from keeping some game animals close at hand. It was a protracted process that began by learning how to manage flocks of wild sheep. By then, humans had tamed some particularly friendly wolves, and over generations of training and selective breeding, transformed their descendants into man’s best, the dog. The knowledge gained from dog domestication was tried on other animals. However, the attempts usually failed because most animals can at best be tamed as individuals.

Domestication of a species – a process that involves genetic changes passed down the generations that make the animals better suited to coexistence with humans – is significantly more difficult than taming an individual animal. However, some animals have behavioral characteristics and social structures that lend themselves to domestication. Some hunter gatherer communities carefully exploited the presence of such traits in goats and sheep, and managed to successfully domesticate them. That transformed what had once been herds of wild game into docile flocks.

Sheep and Goats, Humanity’s First Domesticated Livestock Animals

The domestication of sheep consisted of a rough and ready systemic breeding of wild flocks of mouflon, a wild sheep, in Mesopotamia. Hunter gatherers killed off the nastiest rams in nearby herds, but were relatively kind to the rest. It was not a straightforward process, and it must have had many ups downs and protracted difficulties. Especially when it came to rams during mating season. However, the process eventually led to mouflon flocks whose ewes became so gentle and docile that hunters could approach and milk them. Over the generations of selective breeding that followed, the wild mountain sheep grew increasingly more gentle, docile, plump and sheepish.

From Hunter Gatherers to Pastoralists

The peoples who managed those herds were transformed from hunter gatherers into pastoralists and shepherds. The sheep domestication template was used with other suitable animals. At roughly the same time that sheep were being domesticated, a strain of Iranian ibex was transformed into today’s goats. Around 9000 BC, wild boars in northern China and in what is now Turkey were domesticated into pigs. By 8000 BC, wild aurochs had been domesticated into cattle in the Middle East and India. Similar processes were used around the world to domesticate water buffalo, yaks, asses, donkeys, horses, camels, reindeer, llama, alpaca, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, pigeons, and other staples of animal husbandry.

[This is the fourth in a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution. It saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists

I: Why Did Humans Switch From Wandering Hunter Gatherers to Settled Farmers?

II: When Humans Got Too Good at Hunting

III: When Prehistoric Hunter Gatherers Depleted the Available Resources

IV: The Domestication of Sheep and Goats

V: Newly Emergent Farmers Had to Work a Lot Harder than Hunter Gatherers

VI: Did the Discovery of Bread Cause the Shift From Hunter Gathering to Farming?

VII: Was it Actually Beer, Not Bread, that Motivated Hunter Gatherers to Become Farmers?

VIII: Was it Wheat That Domesticated Humans, Instead of the Other Way Around?

IX: Early Farmers Enjoyed a Bonanza, But it Became a Borderline Bust for Their Descendants

X: Humanity Benefited Greatly From the Switch to Farming, But it Came at a High Cost

XI: Humankind’s Greatest Revolution]

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Some Sources & Further Reading

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe (1990)

History Halls – Pig Domestication: From Wild Boars to Humanity’s Most Dependable Meat Source

National Geographic – Domestication