Zooarcheological evidence demonstrates that wild boar were domesticated independently in the Near East by at least 8,500 BC. By examining pig bones recovered from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic layers at Cayonu Tepesi (10,000–6,300 BC) in southeastern Anatolia identified a disproportionate decrease in molar tooth size over two millennia.
They interpreted this pattern to be the result of a long-term in situ domestication process that led to the emergence of morphologically domestic pigs by 6,800 BC (early Pottery Neolithic). Similar, though contentious, claims for human controlled pig breeding between 8,200 and 7,500 BC have been made at Cafer Höyük and Nevali Çori in southeastern Anatolia.
The introduction of wild boar to Cyprus by at least 9,700–9,400 BC, however, indicates that humans were actively manipulating wild boar populations for millennia before the emergence of domestic pigs.
Though the zooarcheological evidence demonstrates that pigs were first domesticated in Southwest Asia, virtually all modern domestic pigs from western Eurasia possess mitochondrial signatures similar (or identical) to European wild boar. Ancient DNA extracted from early Neolithic domestic pigs in Europe resolved this paradox by demonstrating that early domestic pigs in the Balkans and central Europe shared haplotypes with modern Near Eastern wild boar.
The absence of Near Eastern haplotypes in pre-Neolithic European wild boar suggested that early domestic pigs in Europe must have been introduced from Anatolia by the mid 6th millennium BC before spreading to the Paris basin by the early 4th millennium BC.
Abstract
Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ∼8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or more likely appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar.
As a result, European wild boar mtDNA lineages replaced Near Eastern/Anatolian mtDNA signatures in Europe and subsequently replaced indigenous domestic pig lineages in Anatolia. The specific details of these processes, however, remain unknown.
To address questions related to early pig domestication, dispersal, and turnover in the Near East, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA and dental geometric morphometric variation in 393 ancient pig specimens representing 48 archeological sites (from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period) from Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
Our results reveal the first genetic signatures of early domestic pigs in the Near Eastern Neolithic core zone. We also demonstrate that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion.
In addition, we present a significantly more refined chronology for the introduction of European domestic pigs into Asia Minor that took place during the Bronze Age, at least 900 years earlier than previously detected.
By the 5th century AD, European signatures completely replaced the endemic lineages possibly coinciding with the widespread demographic and societal changes that occurred during the Anatolian Bronze and Iron Ages.
Introduction
The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is one of the most important biocultural processes in human history. Though this transition took place in numerous locations across the globe, the earliest stages of animal domestication in western Eurasia are recorded in the northern Fertile Crescent in the 9th millennium BC. Recent evidence suggests that the establishment of food production was followed by rapid population growth and agropastoral economies often spread through demic diffusion. This was certainly the case for Southwest Asia where, following the development of agricultural economies, farmers migrated into Europe during the Neolithic bringing with them domestic crops and livestock.
The increased resolving power of new genetic and morphometric techniques has allowed for the identification of fine-scale population differences across wide temporal and geographic contexts and the capability of tracking these differences through time and space. For example, DNA derived from modern animal and plant domesticates have been used to unravel geographic origins and dispersal patterns. The use of modern data alone, however, can be problematic. Past domestic populations often underwent dramatic bottlenecks, demographic fluctuations (including complete replacement), and admixture with wild relatives, thus obscuring the genetic signatures of earlier populations.
Analyses of ancient DNA (aDNA) have overcome this issue by typing (pre)historic populations and allowing for the direct observation of genetic signatures through time. This approach has generated new insights related to past genetic diversity, wild–domestic hybridization, and human migration. Similarly, novel morphometric methods, including geometric morphometrics (GMM), have been successfully applied to document changes between wild and domestic animals and plants and to track the phenotypic evolution of past populations.
Zooarcheological evidence demonstrates that wild boar were domesticated independently in the Near East by at least 8,500 BC. By examining pig bones recovered from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic layers at Cayonu Tepesi (10,000–6,300 BC) in southeastern Anatolia, identified a disproportionate decrease in molar tooth size over two millennia. They interpreted this pattern to be the result of a long-term in situ domestication process that led to the emergence of morphologically domestic pigs by 6,800 BC (early Pottery Neolithic). Similar, though contentious, claims for human controlled pig breeding between 8,200 and 7,500 BC have been made at Cafer Höyük and Nevali Çori in southeastern Anatolia. The introduction of wild boar to Cyprus by at least 9,700–9,400 BC, however, indicates that humans were actively manipulating wild boar populations for millennia before the emergence of domestic pigs.
Though the zooarcheological evidence demonstrates that pigs were first domesticated in Southwest Asia, virtually all modern domestic pigs from western Eurasia possess mitochondrial signatures similar (or identical) to European wild boar. Ancient DNA extracted from early Neolithic domestic pigs in Europe resolved this paradox by demonstrating that early domestic pigs in the Balkans and central Europe shared haplotypes with modern Near Eastern wild boar. The absence of Near Eastern haplotypes in pre-Neolithic European wild boar suggested that early domestic pigs in Europe must have been introduced from Anatolia by the mid 6th millennium BC before spreading to the Paris basin by the early 4th millennium BC.
By 3,900 BC, however, virtually all domestic pigs in Europe possessed haplotypes originally only found in European wild boar. This genetic turnover may have resulted from the accumulated introgression of local female wild boar into imported domestic stocks or from an indigenous European domestication process. After the genetic turnover had taken place in Europe, aDNA from Armenian pigs indicated that European domestic pigs were present in the Near East by the 7th century BC at the end of the Iron Age where they replaced indigenous Near Eastern domestic mtDNA lineages. Crucially, the archeological record attests to rapid demographic and societal changes during the Late Bronze Age (1,600–1,200 BC) and Iron Age (1,200–600 BC), including large-scale migrations and the expansion of trade and exchange networks across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea region.
To establish a more precise geographic and temporal framework of mitochondrial Sus haplotypes in Anatolia and to address questions related to the mitochondrial turnover in Armenia at the end of the Iron Age, we obtained mitochondrial sequences from 39 modern wild boar and 393 archeological wild and domestic pigs from 48 Near Eastern sites spanning the Pottery Neolithic (∼7,000 BC) to the 15th century AD from western Turkey to southwestern Iran. We analyzed our novel data alongside previously published ancient and modern sequences. In addition, we performed a dental morphological assessment of 46 archeological specimens (with known genetic haplotypes) using traditional osteometric and GMM methods to assess the correlation between genetic and morphometric variation.
Pig Domestication and Human-Mediated Dispersal in Western Eurasia Revealed through Ancient DNA and Geometric Morphometrics
The comings and goings of Near Eastern and European domestic pigs (Ottoni et al. 2012)
