It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archaeological and genetic techniques has revolutionized our understanding of the pattern and process of domestication and agricultural origins that led to our modern way of life. In the spring of 2011, 25 scholars with a central interest in domestication representing the fields of genetics, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and archaeology met at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center to discuss recent domestication research progress and identify challenges for the future. In this introduction to the resulting Special Feature, we present the state of the art in the field by discussing what is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of domestication, and controversies surrounding the speed, intentionality, and evolutionary aspects of the domestication process. We then highlight three key challenges for future research. We conclude by arguing that although recent progress has been impressive, the next decade will yield even more substantial insights not only into how domestication took place, but also when and where it did, and where and why it did not.

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Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies

In this article I present a new archaeological synthesis concerning the earliest formation of mobile pastoralist economies across central Eurasia. I argue that Eurasian steppe pastoralism developed along distinct local trajectories in the western, central, and (south)eastern steppe, sparking the development of regional networks of interaction in the late fourth and third millennia BC. The “Inner Asian Mountain Corridor” exemplifies the relationship between such incipient regional networks and the process of economic change in the eastern steppe territory. The diverse regional innovations, technologies, and ideologies evident across Eurasia in the mid-third millennium BC are cast as the building blocks of a unique political economy shaped by “nonuniform” institutional alignments among steppe populations throughout the second millennium BC. This theoretical model illustrates how regional channels of interaction between distinct societies positioned Eurasian mobile pastoralists as key players in wide-scale i...

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Multiregional Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism and Nonuniform Institutional Complexity across Eurasia

Lipid biomarker and stable carbon isotope analysis of absorbed food residues in prehistoric pottery from the Libyan Sahara has identified the first adoption of dairying practices in Neolithic Africa in the fifth millennium bc. Rock-art scenes depicting domesticated cattle — some of them even including scenes of milking — are widely distributed in the Tadrart Acacus Mountains of the Libyan Sahara, suggesting that cattle played a big part in the lives of ancient humans in the 'Green' Sahara during the Holocene. Rock art is notoriously difficult to date, but, using isotope analysis of absorbed food residues in pottery excavated from the Takarkori rock shelter in the Libyan Sahara by the Archaeological Mission of Sapienza University of Rome, Julie Dunne and colleagues report the first unequivocal chemical evidence of dairying in the archaeological record, in prehistoric Africa in the fifth millennium BC. These findings confirm that domesticated cattle, and a dairying economy, were part of early Saharan pastoralism. In the prehistoric green Sahara of Holocene North Africa—in contrast to the Neolithic of Europe and Eurasia—a reliance on cattle, sheep and goats emerged as a stable and widespread way of life, long before the first evidence for domesticated plants or settled village farming communities1,2,3. The remarkable rock art found widely across the region depicts cattle herding among early Saharan pastoral groups, and includes rare scenes of milking; however, these images can rarely be reliably dated4. Although the faunal evidence provides further confirmation of the importance of cattle and other domesticates5, the scarcity of cattle bones makes it impossible to ascertain herd structures via kill-off patterns, thereby precluding interpretations of whether dairying was practiced. Because pottery production begins early in northern Africa6 the potential exists to investigate diet and subsistence practices using molecular and isotopic analyses of absorbed food residues7. This approach has been successful in determining the chronology of dairying beginning in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Near East and its spread across Europe8,9,10,11. Here we report the first unequivocal chemical evidence, based on the δ13C and Δ13C values of the major alkanoic acids of milk fat, for the adoption of dairying practices by prehistoric Saharan African people in the fifth millennium bc. Interpretations are supported by a new database of modern ruminant animal fats collected from Africa. These findings confirm the importance of ‘lifetime products’, such as milk, in early Saharan pastoralism, and provide an evolutionary context for the emergence of lactase persistence in Africa.

First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium bc

The Origins of Animal Domestication and Husbandry: A Major Change in the History of Humanity and the Biosphere

The Yamnaya expansions from the western steppe into Europe and Asia during the Early Bronze Age (~3000 BCE) are believed to have brought with them Indo-European languages and possibly horse husbandry. We analyze 74 ancient whole-genome sequences from across Inner Asia and Anatolia and show that the Botai people associated with the earliest horse husbandry derived from a hunter-gatherer population deeply diverged from the Yamnaya. Our results also suggest distinct migrations bringing West Eurasian ancestry into South Asia before and after but not at the time of Yamnaya culture. We find no evidence of steppe ancestry in Bronze Age Anatolia from when Indo-European languages are attested there. Thus, in contrast to Europe, Early Bronze Age Yamnaya-related migrations had limited direct genetic impact in Asia.

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The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia

Horse domestication revolutionized transport, communications, and warfare in prehistory, yet the identification of early domestication processes has been problematic. Here, we present three independent lines of evidence demonstrating domestication in the Eneolithic Botai Culture of Kazakhstan, dating to about 3500 B.C.E. Metrical analysis of horse metacarpals shows that Botai horses resemble Bronze Age domestic horses rather than Paleolithic wild horses from the same region. Pathological characteristics indicate that some Botai horses were bridled, perhaps ridden. Organic residue analysis, using delta13C and deltaD values of fatty acids, reveals processing of mare's milk and carcass products in ceramics, indicating a developed domestic economy encompassing secondary products.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/323/5919/1332.full.pdf

The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking

This paper presents direct radiocarbon measurements on horse skeletal remains from the Beaker period settlement at the site of Newgrange in Ireland, finds which have previously been argued as the earliest domestic horses in Ireland. The new determinations date the horse remains to the Irish Iron Age and shed important new light on the introduction of domestic horses to Ireland and to north-west Europe more generally. Although the new dates undermine the idea for the introduction of horses as part of a ‘Beaker package’, the early use of horse is not well defined archaeologically or chronologically and the earliest use of domestic horses in Ireland and Britain is still uncertain. This paper also identifies evidence for heavy bitting damage on the Iron Age Newgrange horse teeth and presents some possible parallels between the evidence from Newgrange and that at Tara, which has been previously linked with kingship rituals

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0079497X13000030

The Origins of Domestic Horses in North-west Europe: new Direct Dates on the Horses of Newgrange, Ireland

Warfare in the European Bronze Age

A War of Words A review of Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman & Anthony Harding, 1999. Stroud: Sutton; ISBN 0-7509-1795-4 hardback, £25.00 & US$44.95, viii+279 pp., 68 figs.

Nick Thorpe

Papers

The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking

The Origins of Domestic Horses in North-west Europe: new Direct Dates on the Horses of Newgrange, Ireland

Warfare in the European Bronze Age

A War of Words A review of Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman & Anthony Harding, 1999. Stroud: Sutton; ISBN 0-7509-1795-4 hardback, £25.00 & US$44.95, viii+279 pp., 68 figs.

The Atlantic Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition