TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ethier, Jonathan
A1  - Bánffy, Eszter
A1  - Vuković, Jasna
A1  - Leshtakov, Krassimir
A1  - Bacvarov, Krum
A1  - Rofet-Salque, Mélanie
A1  - Evershed, Richard
A1  - Ivanova, Maria
T1  - Earliest expansion of animal husbandry beyond the Mediterranean zone in the sixth millennium BC
T2  - Scientific reports
N2  - Since their domestication in the Mediterranean zone of Southwest Asia in the eighth millennium BC, sheep, goats, pigs and cattle have been remarkably successful in colonizing a broad variety of environments. The initial steps in this process can be traced back to the dispersal of farming groups into the interior of the Balkans in the early sixth millennium BC, who were the first to introduce Mediterranean livestock beyond its natural climatic range. Here, we combine analysis of biomolecular and isotopic compositions of lipids preserved in prehistoric pottery with faunal analyses of taxonomic composition from the earliest farming sites in southeast Europe to reconstruct this pivotal event in the early history of animal husbandry. We observe a marked divergence between the (sub)Mediterranean and temperate regions of Southeast Europe, and in particular a significant increase of dairying in the biochemical record coupled with a shift to cattle and wild fauna at most sites north of the Balkan mountain range. The findings strongly suggest that dairying was crucial for the expansion of the earliest farming system beyond its native bioclimatic zone.
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/43965
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-439656
SN  - 2045-2322
N1  - Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © Te Author(s) 2017
VL  - 7
IS  - 1, Art. 7146
SP  - 1
EP  - 10
PB  - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
CY  - [London]
ER  -