Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Ancient plant samples extracted from present-day Syria show hints of charred dung, indicating that people were burning animal droppings by the end of the Old Stone Age, researchers report September 14 in PLOS One.
The findings suggest humans were using the dung as fuel and may have started animal tending during or even before the transition to agriculture. But what animals produced the dung and the exact nature of the animal-human relationship remain unclear.
“We know today that dung fuel is a valuable resource, but it hasn’t really been documented prior to the Neolithic,” says Alexia Smith, an archaeobotanist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
It found that the dung burning coincided with a shift from circular to linear buildings, an indication of a more sedentary lifestyle, along with steadily rising numbers of wild sheep at the site and a decline in gazelle and other small game. Combined, the authors argue, these findings suggest humans may have started tending animals outside their homes and were burning the piles of dung at hand as a supplement to wood.
