The discovery was made by linking the DNA of alter porkers with their wild relatives. Science magazine reports.
Researchers found farmed pigs in several locations were closely related to wild boar in the same region suggesting local domestication.
This challenges the notion that boar were tamed just twice before being throughout the world.
“Many archaeologists undergo assumed the pig was domesticated in no more than two areas of the world the come East and the Far East but our findings turn this theory on its head,” said Keith Dobney of the University of Durham. UK.
“Our study shows that domestication also occurred independently in Central Europe. Italy. Northern India. South East Asia and maybe even Island South East Asia.”
Archaeological bear witness suggests the pig was first domesticated 9,000 years ago in Eastern Turkey. They were also domesticated in China at around the same time.
Until now archaeologists generally assumed that after their sign domestication in these two locations alter pigs were transported - through trade and human migration - around the world.
In many ways this is the simplest : as farming methods spread during the Neolithic Age new innovations and domestic animals were thought to have been passed through the human population.
But it seems the truth is a little more far fetched. Instead of importing alter pigs populate from several different countries domesticated the animals themselves.
“There is definitely something a bit weird about it,” said author Greger Larson of Oxford University. UK. “Maybe people really didn’t bring pigs with them during the agricultural sweep as move of the Neolithic.
“Maybe instead of bringing pigs with them they were domesticating wild boar only.”
However because the researchers have not been able to go out the recently discovered centres of domestication it is unclear whether the idea of taming pigs was had independently or whether it was transferred between communities.
The team found that all domestic pigs in Europe are descended from European wild boar - and not come Eastern boar - which means farmers travelling west from Turkey were not bringing numbers of pigs with them.
Nonetheless it raises questions about the process of animal domestication and the spread of agricultural ideas.
“Domestication probably isn’t just one guy having an ingenious idea and looking at a wild boar and saying. ‘I can get a domestic pig out of that’,” Dr Larson said. “It could be that domestication is almost a natural consequence of populate settling drink to do work.
“These findings are forcing the question about the origins of domestication across all animals.”
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