“And we thought, well, humans and animals pee…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“This is the first time, to our knowledge, that people have picked up on salts in archaeological materials and used them in a way to look at the development of animal management,” says Abell, now a graduate student at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.<\/p>\n
Scholars think the intensive food production that started about 11,000 years ago\u2014a time period called the Neolithic Revolution\u2014allowed cities to grow, led to technological innovation, and eventually enabled human civilization as we know it today.<\/p>\n
Scientists knew people at the site had captive animals because of accumulations of dung and other evidence. However, reconstructing the scale and pace at which humans were domesticating sheep and goats was difficult using just bone fragments and fossilized dung, Abell says.<\/p>\n
The researchers wondered what other clues a bunch of animals onsite might have left behind. Coauthor Susan Mentzer of the University of T\u00fcbingen in Germany previously found chemical compounds in the soil that might be from urine.<\/p>\n
“And we thought, well, humans and animals pee, and when they pee, they release a bunch of salt,” Abell says. “At a dry place like this, we didn’t think salts would be washed away and redistributed.”<\/p>\n
![\"Researchers](\"https:\/\/cdn.uanews.arizona.edu\/s3fs-public\/styles\/gallery-large-800x600\/public\/story-images\/western_section_duru_smaller.jpg?itok=JttYITam\")
Urine salts<\/h3>\n
The various levels of the archeological dig at A\u015f\u0131kl\u0131 H\u00f6y\u00fck span the time before human settlement through the time when the settlement was abandoned\u2014a period of about 1,000 years.<\/p>\n
“By 500 years in, there were more sheep and goats than people…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
More meat<\/h3>\n
Abell says those changes line up with other evidence from the site that suggests the people initially hunted sheep and goats, then started keeping just a few animals, and shifted to having large numbers of animals corralled within the settlement. Finally, as animal numbers increased even more, the animals were moved to the periphery of the site.<\/p>\n
Stiner says, “In the very beginning, a family might have one or two kids or lambs they raised through the winter\u2014kind of a meat supplement. By 500 years in, there were more sheep and goats than people\u2014and on and on, as they became more and more dependent on the animals.”<\/p>\n
The team calculated that 10,450 years ago, the density of people and animals occupying the settlement at A\u015f\u0131kl\u0131 H\u00f6yu\u0308k jumped from near zero to approximately one person or animal for every 10 square meters. Modern-day semi-intensive feedlots have densities of about one sheep for every 5 square meters.<\/p>\n
The researchers hope to find a way to differentiate between human and animal urine salts. They think the methodology could be applied in other arid areas and could be especially helpful at sites where other physical evidence, such as bones, is lacking.<\/p>\n
Stiner says the new method could help to clarify the larger picture of humanity’s relationship to animals during this transitional period. “We might find similar trends in other archaeological sites of the period in the Middle East.”<\/p>\n
Additional coauthors are from the University of Arizona and Istanbul University in Turkey. The National 糖心视频 Foundation funded the research.<\/p>\n
Source: University of Arizona<\/a>\/Sarah Fecht for Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"