TechnologyThe Middle East
Sheep, goat, pig and cattle
Humans acquire living food stores that walk themselves
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Domestication changed the animals physically within a few generations: smaller bodies, smaller horns, earlier maturity. It also changed the humans. Drinking milk as an adult requires a gene that was rare before livestock and then spread faster than almost any gene we know of — one of the clearest cases of culture driving biological evolution.
For children
In the mountains north of Mesopotamia people began keeping sheep and goats instead of hunting them. The animals gave milk, wool and meat again and again — and they could be moved. A hunted animal is eaten once; a herd yields something every year.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org