Timeline of Animal Domestication
Where and when people domesticated dogs, livestock, poultry and other animals, from dogs at least 14,000 years ago and the first Fertile Crescent livestock around 9000 BCE to selective breeding, cloning and the gene-edited pigs approved in 2025.
- Category
- Agriculture & Food
- Events
- 26 events ~14,000 years ago – 2025
- Generated
- by claude-opus-5-5
~14,000 years ago: Puppy buried with two people at Oberkassel
A dog buried with a man and a woman at Oberkassel, near Bonn in Germany, is among the earliest undisputed domestic dogs; it had survived canine distemper as a puppy, apparently through human care. Dogs descend from Ice Age wolves and were domesticated by hunter-gatherers before any other animal or crop, but where and how many times is debated; genetic estimates of the dog–wolf split, an upper limit, range from about 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn%E2%80%93Oberkassel_dog~9000 – 8500 BCE: Herders domesticate sheep from the Asiatic mouflon
Sheep were among the first livestock. The zooarchaeologist Melinda Zeder locates their domestication in the region from the northern Zagros Mountains to southeastern Anatolia, with possible signs of management in northeastern Iraq perhaps 1,000 years earlier. Early sheep were kept for meat, milk and skins; woolly fleeces were selected later, perhaps from about 6000 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_sheep~8500 BCE: Farmers domesticate cattle from the aurochs
Taurine cattle were domesticated from aurochs in the upper Euphrates and Tigris region, near early farming villages in present-day Syria and Turkey. Ancient DNA indicated a small founding population followed by interbreeding with wild cattle. Cattle supplied meat and later milk and traction; humped zebu cattle were domesticated separately in South Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Phylogeny~8500 – 8000 BCE: Farmers in southeastern Anatolia domesticate pigs
Pigs were domesticated from wild boar in southeastern Anatolia, around the upper Tigris basin, with Çayönü a candidate site; wild boar had been taken to Cyprus even earlier. Near Eastern pigs reached Europe with farmers by about 6500 BCE and then interbred so heavily with local wild boar that later European pigs carried no more than 4% Near Eastern ancestry, a 2019 genome study found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig#Domestication_in_the_Neolithic~8000 BCE: Zagros herders keep goats at Ganj Dareh
At Ganj Dareh in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, directly radiocarbon-dated goat bones show a shift to killing mostly young males while sparing females, the earliest well-dated evidence of goat herding. Goats descend from the bezoar ibex, and ancient genomes published in 2018 showed that several distinct wild populations across the Fertile Crescent were domesticated in a dispersed process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganj_Dareh~7500 BCE: Cat buried beside a person on Cyprus
A cat buried close to a human at Shillourokambos on Cyprus, an island with no native wildcats, shows that early farmers had carried wildcats there by sea. Domestic cats descend from the African wildcat, probably drawn to rodents in farming villages, but whether they were first domesticated in the Levant, Egypt or elsewhere is debated; ancient genomes published in 2025 suggest they reached Europe only about 2,000 years ago, probably from North Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shillourokambos7th millennium BCE: Anatolian farmers process milk in pottery
Fat residues in more than 2,200 pottery vessels from the Near East and southeastern Europe showed that farmers were already using milk, especially in northwestern Anatolia, where cattle were common; published in 2008, it was then the earliest direct evidence of milking. The archaeologist Andrew Sherratt had argued in 1981 that milk, wool, traction and riding, the "secondary products" of live animals, came into wide use only in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_products_revolution~7000 – 4000 BCE: South Asian herders domesticate humped zebu cattle
Humped zebu cattle were domesticated from the Indian aurochs in South Asia, separately from the taurine cattle of the Near East, and now predominate in India and many tropical regions. The date is uncertain: older chronologies put the first farmers at Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan, the main early site, at about 8000 BCE, but radiocarbon dates on human tooth enamel published in 2025 placed the start of its Neolithic cemetery at about 5200 – 4900 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebu~6600 BCE: Chinese farmers domesticate pigs independently
Pigs were domesticated a second time, from East Asian wild boar, in China. A 2011 study of molar shape found domestic pigs at Jiahu, an early Neolithic village in Henan, and pigs have been central to Chinese farming ever since; Austronesian seafarers later carried Asian pigs, along with dogs and chickens, across Island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu~5000 BCE: Pastoralists in Africa domesticate the donkey
Donkeys were domesticated from the African wild ass, and a 2022 genomic study of more than 200 modern and ancient donkeys concluded that this happened once, in Africa, with donkeys reaching Europe and Asia about 2,500 years later. Ten donkeys buried around 3000 BCE in an early royal funerary complex at Abydos, Egypt, show bone damage from carrying loads, though their limb bones were still close to the wild form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey#History~5000 – 4000 BCE: Andean herders domesticate the llama and alpaca
In the Andes of Peru, people domesticated the llama from the guanaco and the alpaca from the vicuña; DNA studies published in 2001 traced the alpaca to the vicuña rather than, as long assumed, to the guanaco. Llamas served as pack and meat animals and alpacas were bred for their fiber, and Andean peoples also domesticated the guinea pig for food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llama4th millennium BCE: Chinese villagers raise silkworms for silk
The domestic silk moth, Bombyx mori, was bred in China from the wild silk moth into a flightless insect that cannot survive without people. Silk fabric wrapped children buried at Yangshao culture sites in Henan, and silk proteins in soil from 8,500-year-old graves at Jiahu may be older still, though whether they came from wild or farmed moths is unclear. Chinese tradition credits the discovery of silk to the legendary Empress Leizu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombyx_mori~3500 BCE: Botai settlers in Kazakhstan live off horses
People of the Botai culture in northern Kazakhstan lived largely on horses, and corral-like enclosures, dung, possible bit wear on teeth and fats in pottery identified in 2009 as mare's milk made Botai the leading candidate for the first horse domestication. Ancient genomes published in 2018 showed that Botai horses were ancestors mainly of Przewalski's horses, not of modern domestic horses, and whether the Botai herded or mostly hunted their horses is still debated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botai_culture3rd – 2nd millennium BCE: Camels domesticated in Central Asia and Arabia
The two-humped Bactrian camel was domesticated in Central Asia, by about 2500 BCE according to remains from Shahr-e Sukhteh in Iran, and the one-humped dromedary in the Arabian Peninsula, where genetic evidence points to the southeast but dates are disputed. Dromedaries reached the southern Levant as pack animals only in the Iron Age: camel bones from copper-smelting sites in the Aravah Valley of Israel date from the late 10th century BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel#Domestication~2200 BCE: Modern domestic horses emerge on the Volga–Don steppe
Genomes of hundreds of ancient horses, published in 2021 and 2024, traced modern domestic horses to a lineage from the lower Volga–Don region of the western Eurasian steppe, where breeding under human control, seen in close-kin mating and shorter generation times, began. The lineage spread across Eurasia from about 2000 BCE with the spoke-wheeled chariots of the Sintashta culture, replacing almost all other horses; the studies rejected the idea that horse riding drove steppe migrations into Europe around 3000 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse~1650 – 1250 BCE: Villagers in Thailand keep the earliest known chickens
A 2022 review of chicken bones from about 600 sites in 89 countries found the earliest unambiguous domestic chickens at Ban Non Wat, a Neolithic village in central Thailand, and concluded that chickens reached central China only in the late 2nd millennium BCE, contrary to earlier claims; the authors argue that rice and millet farming drew wild red junglefowl into villages. Chickens reached the Mediterranean around 800 BCE, where they were at first treated as exotic birds rather than food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken#Domestication~300 BCE – 100 CE: Mesoamericans raise domestic turkeys
Turkeys were domesticated from the South Mexican wild turkey in central Mexico for meat, eggs and feathers. The earliest indirect evidence is captive-raised Mexican turkeys traded far outside their natural range to the Maya city of El Mirador in Guatemala in the Late Preclassic period; ancient DNA points to a separate domestication in the precontact US Southwest, and Spanish colonists took Mexican birds, ancestors of today's breeds, to Europe in the 16th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_turkey1493: Columbus brings Old World livestock to the Americas
Christopher Columbus's second voyage carried horses, cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock to Hispaniola; the Americas' own domestic animals were few, chiefly the dog, llama, alpaca, guinea pig, turkey and Muscovy duck. Horses, extinct in the Americas since the end of the last ice age, spread through Indigenous trade networks to the Great Plains and northern Rockies by the first half of the 17th century, archaeological horse remains show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange#Of_animals1760s: Bakewell breeds livestock by systematic selection
Robert Bakewell, farming at Dishley Grange in Leicestershire, England, bred sheep, cattle and horses by choosing the animals he wanted and mating close relatives to fix their traits, producing the New Leicester sheep and an improved breed of Longhorn cattle. He also hired out his rams for stud on a large scale, and Charles Darwin later cited his results as evidence of how far deliberate breeding could change domestic animals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist)1868: Darwin publishes a study of variation under domestication
Charles Darwin's two-volume "The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication", published on January 30, assembled evidence from breeders and from his own pigeon breeding on how domestic animals and plants vary and how selection shapes them, expanding the opening chapter of "On the Origin of Species" (1859). It also set out pangenesis, his theory of heredity through particles he called gemmules, which later genetics abandoned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Variation_of_Animals_and_Plants_Under_Domestication1873: Kennel Club founded in London
Sewallis Shirley and a dozen other dog-show enthusiasts founded the Kennel Club, now the Royal Kennel Club, to set consistent rules for dog shows, which had multiplied since the first, at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1859; its first stud book of pedigrees followed in 1874. Closed registries and written breed standards of this kind shaped most modern dog breeds, which descend from small numbers of founders selected within the last 200 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Kennel_Club1949: Polge, Smith and Parkes freeze sperm with glycerol
Christopher Polge, Audrey Smith and Alan Parkes at the National Institute for Medical Research in London reported in Nature that sperm treated with glycerol could survive freezing at very low temperatures, a discovery made by accident after a mix-up of bottles. By 1952 Polge reported high pregnancy rates in cattle inseminated with bull semen frozen for more than a year, and frozen semen let artificial insemination spread the genes of selected bulls far beyond their own farms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Polge1959: Fox domestication experiment begins in Novosibirsk
Dmitry Belyaev, who had begun selecting farmed foxes for tameness in 1952, and Lyudmila Trut started a long-term experiment near Novosibirsk in which only the least fearful and aggressive silver foxes of each generation bred, to test whether selection for tameness alone produces the traits of domestic animals. Tail wagging appeared by the fourth generation, floppy ears and spotted coats later; a later review traced the founders to Canadian fur-farm stock and called the conclusions overstated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox1996: Dolly the sheep cloned from an adult cell
Dolly, a Finn-Dorset ewe born on July 5 at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell: Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues transferred the nucleus of a mammary gland cell into an egg cell whose own nucleus had been removed. Earlier cloned mammals had been made from embryonic cells; announced in February 1997, Dolly showed that a specialized adult cell could be reprogrammed to produce a whole animal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep)2015: US approves genetically engineered salmon as food
On November 19 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved AquAdvantage salmon, an Atlantic salmon given a Chinook salmon growth hormone gene with an ocean pout promoter so that it grows faster, as the first genetically engineered animal allowed into the American food supply. Raised only as sterile females in land-based tanks, it went on sale in 2017 in Canada and 2021 in the United States, but AquaBounty Technologies closed its last operating farm in December 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AquAdvantage_salmon2025: US regulators approve disease-resistant gene-edited pigs
On April 29 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a gene alteration developed by Genus that made pigs resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). Deleting part of the CD163 gene removed a receptor region used by the virus to infect cells. Canada approved food and feed uses of the pigs in January 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betaarterivirus_suid_1