![[Plowing-with-horned-cattle.jpg]] *Although much later than the period we're talking about here, this 3,000 year old Egyptian image shows a plow being drawn by two bovines, probably oxen (castrated bulls), which were valued for the strength and relative docility.* The yoking of animals to plows, however, points to the other major development of this era, which was the domestication of animals. Although gray wolves joined human communities in Central Asia and became dogs about 33,000 years ago, the domestication of wild sheep and goats probably began in the Zagros Mountains in present-day western Iran, Iraq, and Turkey between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. Residents of archaeological sites like [Ganj Dareh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganj_Dareh) and [Tepe Guran](https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepe_Guran) (both about 10,000 years old) kept goats and sheep, and their remains show changes such as decreased horn size that are evidence of domestication. It's likely that hunters brought some live prey (or the young of an animal they had killed) back to their camps and learned that it was sometimes easier to let the animals reproduce nearby, rather than go out and find wandering wild herds. For their part, the sheep and goats apparently decided that regular feeding and protection from predators wasn't such a bad deal. ![[Copenhagen_Aurochse.jpg]] *9,400 year old Aurochs bull skeleton, Copenhagen Museum, Denmark.* Domesticating cows, which people managed slightly later than goats and sheep, must have been a bit more difficult and scary. The ancestors of modern cattle were [Aurochs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs), wild bovines that stood over six feet at the shoulder and had long, curved horns (they're now extinct). Ancient people had hunted aurochs for millennia; they were featured in cave drawings and paintings dating from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, at many sites including [Lascaux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux) and [Chauvet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave) (France) and [Altamira](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Altamira) (Spain). Their remains (also showing signs of early domestication) have also been found in slightly more recent layers at Ganj Dareh, as well as at [Çatalhöyük](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk) (Turkey) and [Dja’de el-Mughara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dja%27de_el-Mughara) (Syria). A separate domestication process in South Asia, possibly between 9,000 and 8,000 years ago, produced the distinctive Indian [Zebu cattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebu). Archaeological sites at [Mehrgarh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh) (Pakistan) and [Bhirrana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhirrana) (India) contain skeletons with smaller body sizes and reduced horns, again suggesting domestication. ----- Next: [[2.6. - Early European Farmers]] Back: [[2.4 - But Some People Did]]