Domestication of Animals
Discover how humans domesticated animals — from dogs 15,000 years ago to cattle, sheep, and horses — reshaping ecosystems and societies forever.
The domestication of animals was one of the most consequential processes in human history, transforming not only human societies but entire ecosystems. Dogs were the first, domesticated from wolves perhaps 15,000 years ago — long before any plant was cultivated. Sheep and goats followed around 10,000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent, cattle around 8,000 BCE, and horses on the Central Asian steppe around 4,000 BCE.
Each domestication event had cascading effects. Cattle and oxen provided draft power that made large-scale agriculture possible. Sheep and goats produced wool, milk, and meat. Horses revolutionized transportation, warfare, and communication. Chickens, pigs, and camels each reshaped the societies that adopted them in different ways.
But domestication came with a hidden cost. Living in close proximity to animals exposed humans to new diseases — influenza, smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis all originated as animal pathogens that jumped to human hosts. These zoonotic diseases would later become devastating weapons of unintentional biological warfare when Old World populations, with millennia of accumulated immunity, encountered New World peoples who had domesticated far fewer animal species.