European hunter-gatherers, farmers coexisted for 2,000 years

NEW DELHI: It has been commonly assumed that ancient hunter-gatherer societies crumbled in the face of agriculture based societies. However, research just published in the journal Science has a stunning new perspective - both types of communities existed side by side for 2000 years in Central Europe. 

Indigenous hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers lived side-by-side for more than 2,000 years in Central Europe, before the hunter-gatherer communities died out or adopted the agricultural lifestyle. The results come from a study undertaken by the that has just been published in the journal Science. 

A team led by anthropologist Professor Joachim Burger of the Institute of Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) studied bones from the 'Blatterhohle' cave near Hagen in Germany, where both hunter-gatherers and farmers were buried. 

"It is commonly assumed that the Central European hunter-gatherers disappeared soon after the arrival of farmers," said Dr. Ruth Bollongino, lead author of the study in a statement released by the University. "But our study shows that the descendants of Mesolithic Europeans maintained their hunter-gatherer way of life and lived in parallel with the immigrant farmers, for at least 2,000 years. The hunter-gathering lifestyle thus only died out in Central Europe around 5,000 years ago, much later than previously thought." 

Until around 7,500 years ago all central Europeans were hunter-gatherers. They had descended from the first anatomically modern humans to arrive in Europe, around 45,000 years ago. But previous genetic studies by Professor Burger's group indicated that agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle were brought to Central Europe around 7,500 years ago by immigrant farmers. From that time on, little trace of hunter-gathering can be seen in the archaeological record, and it was widely assumed that the hunter-gatherers died out or were absorbed into the farming populations.

The Mainz anthropologists have now determined that the foragers stayed in close proximity to farmers, had contact with them for thousands of years, and buried their dead in the same cave. This contact was not without consequences, because hunter-gatherer women sometimes married into the farming communities, while no genetic lines of farmer women have been found in hunter-gatherers. "This pattern of marriage is known from many studies of human populations in the modern world. Farmer women regarded marrying into hunter-gatherer groups as social anathema, maybe because of the higher birthrate among the farmers," explains Burger. 

For the study published in Science, the team examined the DNA from the bones from the 'Blatterhohle' cave in Westphalia, which is being excavated by the Berlin archaeologist Jorg Orschiedt. It is one of the rare pieces of evidence of the continuing presence of foragers over a period of about 5,000 years. 

"It was only through the analysis of isotopes in the human remains, performed by our Canadian colleagues, that the pieces of the puzzle began to fit," states Bollongino. "This showed that the hunter-gatherers sustained themselves in Central and Northern Europe on a very specialized diet that included fish, among other things, until 5,000 years ago. 

It seems that the hunter-gatherers' lifestyle only died out in Central Europe 5,000 years ago. Agriculture and animal husbandry became the way of life from then on.

Goat: Man's first domesticated animal

By Henrylito D. Tacio

Sun Star 

IN INTRODUCING his book, Goat Husbandry, author David MacKenzie wrote: "When man began his farming operations in the dawn of history, the goat was the kingpin of the personal life, making possible the conquest of desert and mountain and the occupation of the fertile land that lay beyond. The first of Man's domestic animals to colonize the wilderness, the goat is the last to abandon the deserts that man leaves behind him."

MacKenzie further wrote: "Forever the friend of the pioneer and the last survivor, the goat was never well loved by arable farmers on fertile land. When agriculture produces crops that man, cow and sheep can consume with more profit, the goat retreats to the mountain tops and the wilderness, rejected and despised – hated too, as the emblem of anarchy."

Goats are considered the first hoofed animals ever tamed. In the Biblical town of Jericho, people kept tame goats as long as 6,000 or 7,000 years before Christ.

The ancient Greeks and Romans paid great attention to the rearing of goats. Anyone at all familiar with classical authors will remember how frequently these animals are mentioned, especially in pastoral poems.

In the Philippines, more and more people are now raising goats, in their farms, in their backyards, and even in their ranches.

"We have been raising goats since the early 1970s and we have observed that the demand for the animal has been growing," admitted Roy C. Alimoane, the current director of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) Foundation, Inc. MBRLC is a non-government organization based in the southern part of the Philippines.

Just like cows, goat is valued mainly for its meat and milk. "As a milk producer, the goat is inevitably more efficient where the available fodder is of such low quality that a cow can barely live," MacKenzie wrote in his book.

"Indeed, I find among the writers, that the milk of the goat is next in estimation to a woman; for it helpeth the stomach, removeth oppilations and stoppings of the liver and looseth the belly," William Harrison wrote, echoing the opinion of 2,000 years of medical writing.

Hippocrates commended the virtues of goats’ milk and, according to Homer, some of the gods and goddesses themselves were reared on it.

There is probably no other animal, except dog, that has a greater variety of range than the goat. "It is met with in most parts of the world, and appears as much at home in the cold regions of Norway and Sweden as in the hot countries of Asia and Africa," noted H.S. Holmes Pegler in The Book of the Goat.