Archaeologists have known for a long time that many of the earliest domesticated plants (wheat, barley) and animals (goats, sheep, maybe even cats) were domesticated in one place and time--central Asia, southern Turkey and Iran, about 10,000 years ago, more or less. Beginning about 7,000 years ago, the animals and plants moved into Europe as a package, along at least two paths. The people who moved the animals and plants and themselves are known collectively as the Linearbandkeramik culture.
Pigs into Europe
But one question that remains more or less unsolved is that of pigs (Sus scrofa). You see, unlike the wild forms of wheat, sheep, goats and barley, wild pigs are indigenous to Europe. So, researchers were always of two minds: were pigs domesticated only in central Asia, or were they independently domesticated in Europe?A research team reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 3, 2007, suggest that, even though the wild boar was indigenous to the Paris basin, until the LBK culture came along, there were no domesticated swine in Europe. Genetics indicate that although many of today's pigs are related to the European wild boar, they are also related to the Sus scrofa of the Near East.
Replacement Pigs
There is, however, evidence that European wild boars were introduced into the Near Eastern domesticates soon after their arrival in Europe. This process, known as retrogression (meaning successful breeding of domesticated and wild animals), produced the European domestic pig, which was spread out from Europe in many places replacing the domesticated Near Eastern swine.
So, based on this research, pigs, like sheep and goats, originally derive from central Asia, where they were domesticated perhaps as early as 11,000 BC, and definitely present at sites such as Hallam Çemi, Çayönü Tepesi, and Neval Çori in eastern Turkey as early as 7000 BC.
Coat Color Variation
A paper on Sus scrofa genetics published in January 2009 in the PLoS Genetics points out that, although wild Asian and European boars are mainly camouflage-colored, the coats of domestic pigs are extremely variegated. The mutations in the genes affecting coat colors occurred only within the past 10,000 years—after domestication. The researchers argue that therefore, coat color variation was selected for by humans, which makes perfectly reasonable piggy sense. A wild pig would likely survive better on its own if it were to stay hidden; while a human might very well choose to be able to find and identify her own pigs.
Source
This article is part of the About.com Guide to the History of Animal Domestication.
Fang, Meiying, et al. 2009 Contrasting Mode of Evolution at a Coat Color Locus in Wild and Domestic Pigs. PLoS Genetics 5(1):e1000341. Open Access
Greger Larson et al. 2007. Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.
