Sheep domestication
Domesticación de la oveja
- Date
- c. 8500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Aşıklı Höyük, Cappadocia, Turkey
- Credited to
- PPNB communities of central Anatolia and the Zagros
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Control of Asian mouflon flocks, with selective culling of young males and penning within the settlement documented by layers of dung. The first renewable source of meat, and later of milk and wool.
Independent centres in central Anatolia and the Zagros (Iran/Iraq); woolly sheep do not appear until the 5th–4th millennium.
What it led to
- Herding and transhumance as a way of life alternative to farming
- Mobile, countable wealth in head of livestock, a basis for inequality
- Zoonotic diseases (brucellosis, anthrax) from close contact with the flock
- The secondary-products revolution: wool and milk
Built on
- Selective hunting of ungulates
- Enclosures and pens