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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Publisher ID:
PONE-D-12-32647
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055958
PMC ID: 3566106
PubMed ID: 23405240
SO-VID: efbc2ce8-4636-4093-9cc8-97691e721301
Copyright statement:
Copyright @
2013
License:
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
Date
received
: 20
October
2012
Date
accepted
: 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.