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      The Prey Pathway: A Regional History of Cattle ( Bos taurus) and Pig ( Sus scrofa) Domestication in the Northern Jordan Valley, Israel

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          Abstract

          The faunal assemblage from the 9 th-8 th millennium BP site at Sha'ar Hagolan, Israel, is used to study human interaction with wild suids and cattle in a time period just before the appearance of domesticated animals of these species in the Jordan Valley. Our results, based on demographic and osteometric data, indicate that full domestication of both cattle and suids occurred at the site during the 8 th millennium. Importantly, domestication was preceded in both taxa by demographic and metric population parameters indicating severe overhunting. The possible role of overhunting in shaping the characteristics of domesticated animals and the social infrastructure to ownership of herds is then explored.

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          The evolution of body size: what keeps organisms small?

          It is widely agreed that fecundity selection and sexual selection are the major evolutionary forces that select for larger body size in most organisms. The general, equilibrium view is that selection for large body size is eventually counterbalanced by opposing selective forces. While the evidence for selection favoring larger body size is overwhelming, counterbalancing selection favoring small body size is often masked by the good condition of the larger organism and is therefore less obvious. The suggested costs of large size are: (1) viability costs in juveniles due to long development and/or fast growth; (2) viability costs in adults and juveniles due to predation, parasitism, or starvation because of reduced agility, increased detectability, higher energy requirements, heat stress, and/or intrinsic costs of reproduction; (3) decreased mating success of large males due to reduced agility and/or high energy requirements; and (4) decreased reproductive success of large females and males due to late reproduction. A review of the literature indicates a substantial lack of empirical evidence for these various mechanisms and highlights the need for experimental studies that specifically address the fitness costs of being large at the ecological, physiological, and genetic levels. Specifically, theoretical investigations and comprehensive case studies of particular model species are needed to elucidate whether sporadic selection in time and space is sufficient to counterbalance perpetual and strong selection for large body size.
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            The initial domestication of goats (Capra hircus) in the Zagros mountains 10,000 years ago.

            Initial goat domestication is documented in the highlands of western Iran at 10,000 calibrated calendar years ago. Metrical analyses of patterns of sexual dimorphism in modern wild goat skeletons (Capra hircus aegagrus) allow sex-specific age curves to be computed for archaeofaunal assemblages. A distinct shift to selective harvesting of subadult males marks initial human management and the transition from hunting to herding of the species. Direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates on skeletal elements provide a tight temporal context for the transition.
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              Mitochondrial DNA analysis shows a Near Eastern Neolithic origin for domestic cattle and no indication of domestication of European aurochs.

              The extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius) was a large type of cattle that ranged over almost the whole Eurasian continent. The aurochs is the wild progenitor of modern cattle, but it is unclear whether European aurochs contributed to this process. To provide new insights into the demographic history of aurochs and domestic cattle, we have generated high-confidence mitochondrial DNA sequences from 59 archaeological skeletal finds, which were attributed to wild European cattle populations based on their chronological date and/or morphology. All pre-Neolithic aurochs belonged to the previously designated P haplogroup, indicating that this represents the Late Glacial Central European signature. We also report one new and highly divergent haplotype in a Neolithic aurochs sample from Germany, which points to greater variability during the Pleistocene. Furthermore, the Neolithic and Bronze Age samples that were classified with confidence as European aurochs using morphological criteria all carry P haplotype mitochondrial DNA, suggesting continuity of Late Glacial and Early Holocene aurochs populations in Europe. Bayesian analysis indicates that recent population growth gives a significantly better fit to our data than a constant-sized population, an observation consistent with a postglacial expansion scenario, possibly from a single European refugial population. Previous work has shown that most ancient and modern European domestic cattle carry haplotypes previously designated T. This, in combination with our new finding of a T haplotype in a very Early Neolithic site in Syria, lends persuasive support to a scenario whereby gracile Near Eastern domestic populations, carrying predominantly T haplotypes, replaced P haplotype-carrying robust autochthonous aurochs populations in Europe, from the Early Neolithic onward. During the period of coexistence, it appears that domestic cattle were kept separate from wild aurochs and introgression was extremely rare.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2013
                6 February 2013
                : 8
                : 2
                : e55958
                Affiliations
                [1]Laboratory of Archaeozoology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
                University of Oxford, United Kingdom
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Advised the doctorate work by N. Marom on the faunal remains from Sha'ar Hagolan: GB-O. Conceived and designed the experiments: NM GB-O. Performed the experiments: NM. Analyzed the data: NM. Wrote the paper: NM.

                Article
                PONE-D-12-32647
                10.1371/journal.pone.0055958
                3566106
                23405240
                efbc2ce8-4636-4093-9cc8-97691e721301
                Copyright @ 2013

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 20 October 2012
                : 8 January 2013
                Page count
                Pages: 13
                Funding
                This work was supported by a research grant from the 1) Irene Levi Sala Care Archaeological Foundation: “Taphonomy and Subsistence Economy at the Yarmukian Site of Sha'ar Hagolan”; 2) The Israeli Council for Higher Education through a Rotenstreich Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Students in the Humanities ( http://che.org.il/en/?page_id=9074). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Community Structure
                Species Interactions
                Evolutionary Biology
                Paleontology
                Paleoecology
                Vertebrate Paleontology
                Paleontology
                Paleoecology
                Vertebrate Paleontology
                Earth Sciences
                Paleontology
                Paleoecology
                Vertebrate Paleontology
                Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Anthropology
                Paleoanthropology
                Archaeology

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