The ancient Near East was the site of several key developments in the relationship between the animal world and the human species. These include the first animal domestication after the dog, and the first texts on the relationship, which shed further light on relationships already documented for later periods by archaeozoological remains, artifacts, and figurative representations. It is these diverse sources that make it possible to study this subject, which has been renewed in recent years by archaeological research into human/animal relations.
From the 10th millennium BC onwards, the Ancient Near East underwent a process of Neolithization, characterized by the domestication of plants and animals. The latter profoundly altered the lives of human societies, modifying their activities, resources, and relationship with nature, notably by relegating most of the animal world to the category of the "wild". The creation of an increasingly complex society, culminating in the emergence of the state and urbanization, led to other changes, notably the development of large-scale animal husbandry distributed among several actors (royal palaces, temples, nomads). From a utilitarian point of view, humans mobilized animals to provide various services in crucial activities (agriculture, transport, warfare). They used animal products for different purposes (food, wool, leather, clothing, etc.).
The relationship between humans and animals also has a constant symbolic aspect. Many animals were considered vehicles of supernatural forces, and divine symbols, and could be mobilized in various major rituals (sacrifices to the gods, divination, exorcism). The many artistic representations of animals generally refer to this symbolic aspect. The literati also attempted to classify the animals they knew. They developed stereotypes about the characteristics of many of them, which can be found in various literary texts, notably those in which men are compared to animals to highlight a trait of their personality. While some animals had a high symbolic status (lion, bull, horse, snake), others were denigrated and sometimes infamous (pig).
Animals of the Ancient Near East
Southwest Asia is a vast zoological transition zone, linking different continental areas (Europe, Asia, and Africa). Attested species range from those characteristic of the temperate world in the north to the subtropical world in the far south. The development of complex societies in the Near East brought about changes in the animal world of this region, during the process of "neolithization," which saw the first experiments in animal domestication, leading to a split between domesticated and non-domesticated animals, and subsequently to the introduction of domesticated animals outside the Middle East.
Domesticated animals
The domestication process and its evolution
According to D. Helmer, domestication can be defined as "the control of an animal population through the isolation of the herd, with the loss of panmixia, the suppression of natural selection and the application of artificial selection based on particular traits, either behavioral or cultural. Animals become the property of the human group and are entirely dependent on it. This differs from taming, which only involves isolated individuals of a wild species.
The process of animal domestication is not easy to identify. Research into archaeozoology (the discovery of animal remains on archaeological sites) is helping to shed light on this phenomenon. This involves studying whether an animal is more present than another, which may indicate that it has been domesticated (but this may also be an example of selective hunting), or whether its anatomy has been modified by domestication. Identifying the date of first domestication is therefore complicated, but since we're talking about very remote periods, dating is very vague in any case. Identifying a place or region of domestication is also a difficult task, as discoveries can rapidly alter our knowledge. What's more, there is a tendency to think that there may have been several foci of domestication for certain species, even on the scale of the Middle East. Domestication is, therefore, a complex, long, gradual but coherent process: the domestication of ungulates took place over roughly a millennium, illustrating the fact that societies of the time were able to employ the same techniques to domesticate several species to facilitate their way of life. Domesticated species are often species that had previously been heavily hunted, and it is assumed that domestication may have been preceded by specialized or even selective hunting, favoring a certain type of game, whose movements were gradually organized, along with its diet and breeding grounds, within a specific territory. But a much-hunted species like the gazelle has never been domesticated. Domestication may also have occurred after the capture of animals, which human groups continued to control.
In concrete terms, the phenomenon is one of the elements marking the beginning of the Neolithization process, undoubtedly contemporary with the first experiments in the domestication of plant species in the Near East, between the southern Levant and southern Anatolia. Experiments in intensifying animal herd management took place a little earlier, probably leading to the first experiments in domestication as early as 9500 BC (in Pre-Pottery Neolithic A), but this remains complex to detect as there was no morphological evolution of animals at this stage. Domestication certainly takes shape from 8500 to 8300 (during Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), a period for which morphological changes are indisputable.
The search for the reasons for animal domestication has given rise to several hypotheses, in line with those developed to explain the "Neolithic Revolution." One widespread idea is that domestication was a consequence of climate warming after the end of the last Ice Age, which led to a reduction in the resources available to human groups (plants and animals), who then sought to control them to make better use of them. This was undoubtedly a determining factor, but it should not relegate other factors to the background. Moreover, animals were not necessarily domesticated for their meat, as hunting seems to have remained the main means of obtaining it until around the 8th millennium BC, even if the meat or fat of farmed animals may have helped balance the diet of early farmers, as did milk. Domestication is inextricably linked to a process of species selection by man. Domesticated animals are not potential food competitors for humans, except the dog (or cat, little attested in the ancient Near East), which plays the specific role of a human companion. On the contrary, they are food partners for farmers, who feed on the seeds of the cereals and legumes they grow, but cannot assimilate the cellulose contained in straw, stems, and leaves, unlike domesticated ruminants: there may therefore be a link between the domestication of plants and that of animals. It also can be noted that selection precedes domestication, and continues afterward, with man controlling animal reproduction. In the long term, this leads to changes in domesticated species, notably morphological and anatomical, such as the loss of horns by sheep and, above all, a reduction in their size, which has enabled archaeozoologists to identify the first domesticated animals. It also alters the reproductive cycle of animals, since when they are domesticated they no longer have a rutting and calving period, and can therefore procreate all year round.
According to "symbolic" approaches, the domestication of animals is accompanied by a change in man's conceptions of nature, as he realizes that he can seek to control and dominate it. This ties in with the theses developed by J. Cauvin, who sees Neolithization as the consequence of a "revolution in symbols," and sees the domestication of animals above all as the consequence of "a human desire to dominate beasts." The human-animal relationship as documented is now seen less in terms of domination than in the past, as a less unbalanced relationship than it might seem. In any case, the impact of animal domestication on human society cannot be underestimated, as it has profoundly altered the utilitarian, economic, biological (pooling of viruses), and social aspects of human-animal communities, and symbolic, with the distinction between the wild, which is external to human society, and the domesticated, which is fully part of it. In building a society with domesticated animals, man is thus led to change himself, by adapting to his partners, who cannot be reduced to mere dominated beings.
The phase of animal domestication was followed by another significant evolution, which saw animals used not only for the products they provided after slaughter (skin, meat, fat, bones), but also for renewable, or secondary, products that did not require them to be killed (wool, hair, milk) and their labor power (draught, beating). This stage has been dubbed the "secondary products revolution" by A. Sherratt. Originally placed in the 4th millennium BC (i.e., the Final Chalcolithic), this evolution is undoubtedly older, since milk from domesticated animals may have been commonly used from the 7th millennium BC onwards according to the analysis of archaeological documentation from these periods, and perhaps even earlier, as early as the end of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Similarly, the traction power of cattle could have been used as early as the Neolithic, as well as sheep's wool and goat's hair, although this remains difficult to establish archaeologically. The 4th millennium BC saw an intensification in the exploitation of these secondary products, accompanying the emergence of state structures and urban societies, with their institutions and vast herds.
Domesticated animals in the Ancient Near East
The first domesticated animal was the dog, probably as early as the end of the Palaeolithic: dogs have been found buried with humans from the Natufian period (c. 12000-10000), at Mallaha and Hayonim in the southern Levant. The geographical location of its domestication is the subject of debate, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was domesticated in the Near East. The fact that it was the first domesticated animal, in a pre-Neolithic society that did not practice agriculture, sets it apart from other animals in its relationship with man from the very beginning.