Study says pigs may have been domesticated in China's Neolithic period

Foreign Media: Study Shows That China May Have Domesticated Pigs as Early as the Neolithic Age

A study conducted by Chinese and American archaeologists indicates that about 8,000 years ago, pig domestication had begun in southern China. The research team, including scholars from Dartmouth College and Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, analyzed two early Neolithic sites in the Yangtze River Delta.

The research was published on June 9 in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS), and for the first time discovered that pigs were fed with human-cooked food and waste, indicating that the domestication process of wild boars (Sus scrofa) occurred simultaneously with the development of rice agriculture and settled lifestyles, approximately 8,000 years ago in southern China.

The traditional view (such as a 2017 study in "Scientific Reports") holds that pigs were first domesticated in the Near East (today's Middle East region) and were introduced to Northern Europe around 4500 BC, promoting the domestication of European wild boars.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1834805172702215/

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