14 DAY TRIAL // It is possible that people in Europe have been eating bacon, pork, ham and other similar culinary delights since 4,600 BC, new evidence suggests.
Researchers writing in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature Communications argue that, according to their investigations, our ancestors domesticated pigs about 500 years earlier than previously assumed.
Specialists explain that, thousands of years ago, European lands were inhabited by hunter-gatherers who were the successors of the Neanderthals.
These people kept domestic dogs close to their homes, but did not raise any other animals.
Somewhere between 5,500 BC and 4,200 BC, these hunter-gatherers got the chance to meet and even befriend farmers who arrived in Europe from the south.
By the looks of it, the latter were the ones who taught the hunter-gatherers that domesticating animals was not such a bad idea, and that having a “bacon factory” near home can only come in handy.
Researchers at the Durham University say that, after analyzing pig teeth and bone remains dug out in northern Germany, they reached the conclusion that, not long after the first Neolithic farmers had made their way into Europe, local hunter-gatherers owned such animals.
The pigs domesticated by hunter-gatherers had rather colorful coats and were covered in spots, information collected by means of genetic analysis indicates.
Presently, the specialists are unable to say whether the hunter-gatherers got the pigs from the farmers via trade, or if maybe they stole them.
“Humans love novelty, and though hunter-gatherers exploited wild boar, it would have been hard not to be fascinated by the strange-looking spotted pigs owned by farmers living nearby.”
“It should come as no surprise that the hunter-gatherers acquired some eventually, but this study shows that they did very soon after the domestic pigs arrived in northern Europe,” researcher Greg Larson explains.
“Having people who practiced a very different survival strategy nearby must have been odd, and we know now that the hunter-gathers possessed some of the farmers’ domesticated pigs,” Dr. Greger Larson also says.